How to Snag a Guy In a Hundred Days
by bellmare
Summary: It's about four months until the upcoming school ball, and Blue has her eyes set on a certain target. Will her 'diabolical plan' succeed? Will a seemingly commitment-phobic boy change his ways? —OldRivalShipping. Discontinued.
1. step one: getting to know your target

**Disclaimer: I do not and never will own Pokémon, or Pokémon Special. -weeps in corner-**

**- - x x x x x - -**

Never let it be said that I did not like challenges; they were what broke the monotony of life, because, heck, what _was_ life without something to spice it up? All my friends were all-too-aware of this, as well as, more lamentably, my reputation of a man-eater. As such, I had amassed quite a fair amount of nicknames, mostly pertaining to my so-called finicky tendencies and attachment to material wealth – Persian, Glameow – as well as the doom I tended to bring to unfortunate boys – Absol – and, well, my habit of, according to Sapph, chewing up guys and spitting them out – Victreebel – only to leave them in a much worse shape than they were in before. Yeah, that pretty much summed up my love life in a few words. Or, as of now, _nonexistent _love life.

However, I digress. Where was I, before I started going off on a tangent like that? Oh, yes, I remember now. The subject of challenges, right, right.

Well, it wasn't as though I was actively pursuing challenges. They just tended to wander about in front of me. Although today, such wasn't quite the case, for the said challenge only happened to nonchalantly stroll across my sights, pausing only to give me the most perfunctory of glances, and thoroughly ignoring my cheery wave. Tch, spoilsport. Three months later, and I had yet to crack this tough nut. Still, it would be worth it in the end. Oh-so-worth it.

_That Guy_, as I – along with Crys, Sapph and Platina; Yellow wanted no part in our 'tomfoolery', and insisted on leaving the poor guy alone, though she didn't quite have us convinced – came to dub him, at least, for those few hours on his first day before we got to know his name, was, even at the very best of times, an enigma. That is, according to the oh-so-eloquent Platina, while Sapph merely maintained he was just Mr. Not-So-Talkative. Anyways. The thing was, even now, half a year since he joined the school, we came to find that he wasn't the most outgoing – or cheerful – of people, and worse still, we barely even knew _about _him, period.

However, what we _did_ know back then was that he was a total all-rounder – he had been top of his year back in that school he'd been in before transferring over, and was not only quite the debater, but quite the sportsman as well; however, he didn't really seem to act – or look – it, and when he had stood in silence in front of the class, there was not the slightest glimmer of arrogance – or interest, for that matter – in his green eyes. Whilst everyone had stared at him with keen curiosity, wondering what sort of person he was, the look he returned spoke volumes about him, despite the fact that he had barely uttered a word since traipsing into class, looking rather fashionably ruffled.

**- - x x x x x - -**

_Surge stared down his nose at the new kid with an unfathomable expression on his face, before crossing his brawny arms together. "What's yer name, boy?" he barked, and we all instantly sat up a little straighter in our seats, eager to learn the name of this mystery fellow. _

_He merely stared right back at our_ only-somewhat-slightly-intimidating _substitute teacher, before grunting out a reply that I bet was barely audible to Surge's ears, let alone the people in the front row. The older man scowled a little. "I asked you what's your name, boy," he growled, employing that I'll-kick-your-ass-from-here-to-the-middle-of-next-week-if-you-display-any-sign-of-insubordination-do-you-hear-me tone that was usually reserved for cadets and army recruits, the sort of tone that demanded an equally loud "Sir yes sir!" as an answer; right here and now, it wasn't all that hard to believe that the stern-faced old coot used to be a high-ranking officer in the army, before, for reasons only known to himself, chose to become a teacher. Or, more accurately, a substitute teacher: he was normally the physical education coach, and as such, loathed being cooped up in a little classroom having to watch over what he darkly dubbed to be a 'herd of scrubs'. Nah, to him, time was better spent attempting to tough up some skinny beansprout guys into 'real men', by way of having his Raichu chase them around the field and zap the ones who fell behind. Those poor people._

_Several people in the front row exchanged looks; if things got ugly, and Surge got nasty, like he had last year with a particularly similarly uncooperative Volkner – who had survived the incident, and was now far, far away from here in university, good for him – then they would be the first to bear the brunt of the sub's anger. Right now, poor Bill looked like he wanted nothing more but to head for cover under his desk: with good reason too, I might add. Surge and Bill were renowned for not getting along, due to that disastrous incident a few months back – even now, details were still vague, though it probably had something to do with Surge dropping his laptop, and Bill volunteering to fix it…only to cause some major grief to the ex-army officer along the way; Bill'd been on detention for longer than we cared to remember, and it looked like right now, he was keen to not remind Surge of the fact that he was in this particular class. That, along with the fact that Bill tended to skip every single phys ed class he could would not possibly have endeared him to the grumpy coot in the slightest._

_Well, strictly speaking, Surge wasn't all that old, but he was known for being somewhat short-tempered and irascible – _ha, _what an understatement – and as such, the nickname had kinda stuck. Of course, it went without saying that he was not aware of this._

_New Guy glared a little at Surge, which I must say, required quite some guts, and repeated his name a little louder, in a somewhat monosyllabic mumble. "Green."_

_For several more seconds, an awkward silence settled rather comfortably over the room, until Surge snorted. "Very well then. I hope to see you in my own classes sometime. Heh heh heh." Boy, did that sound intimidating. Doubtless he had some grueling workout routine planned. Watching as New Guy – err, no,_ Green – _trudged over to a seat near the back, to sink so low in it I was surprised he could see over his own knees, the rest of the class turned reluctantly back towards the front, to face the whiteboard, on which Surge was now drawing a rather bad diagram. Man, this guy had no artistic talent whatsoever. The things Pryce and Lorelei could teach him…oh, wait, but they specialized in sculpture…though they could still nevertheless give him pointers on his drawing skills…which were woefully lacking, to say the least…_

_Uh-oh. Why's everyone staring at me? _

_Impatiently wiggling his marker in my general direction, Surge raised an eyebrow, addressing me with a rather irritated, gravelly voice. "Earth to Blue. Quit daydreaming and answer the question."_

_What question? To my right, Crystal scribbled something on a scrap piece of paper and pushed it over to me; it was a momentous task to attempt to read it whilst not craning my neck too much, all the while trying to look like I was about to come up with a semi-intelligible answer. "Uhh," I ventured as suavely as I could, all the while racking my brains for a suitable response, all the while attempting to decipher Crys's handwriting – sure, it was neat and legible, but I was at a distinct disadvantage, sitting as I was at a ninety-degree angle to her. Would it be too obvious if I were to turn my head? Yes, yes it would be, actually._

Shit shit shit shit shit. What was the question? Wait. It had something to do with status ailments, I remember now. Or did it?

"_Um…hmmm…" Oh god, this is what you get for not paying attention in the middle of class. I could almost hear Crys mentally slapping herself on the forehead – I was quite tempted to follow suit, at this rate – and it took every single shred of composure and self-restraint I had to not quail under Surge's incredulous stare, and to not take offence at the faint, disbelieving snort from someplace behind me from idiot anti-authority I'm-So-Smart Green. Before I could get myself into even more trouble, I heard the answer mumbled out from his general location, uttered in New Guy's near-monosyllabic whisper._

"_Attack. A hundred and thirty."_

What did _that_ have to do with status ailments? Still, New Guy had probably been hanging on Surge's words, unlike me, and it was better to trust his judgment.

"_Oh, I know the answer to this, ahahaha…" I attempted to cover up my earlier hesitation, putting on as confident a tone as I could. "It's a hundred and thirty, and that is it's attack stat!"_

"_Correct. Glad to hear your mind is still with us," Surge said drily, "and indeed, she is right. A Flareon's highest base stat, unfortunately enough, is its attack one, and sadly, it only learns one physical attack via level up, TM or otherwise, that affords a same-type attack bonus, as well as takes advantage of its stats. Its ability, Flash Fire, will undoubtedly help it a lot, but at the end of the day…you will not be wasting moves such as Fire Blast or Flamethrower on one. Well done, Missy."_

_I grinned and nodded, playing along to the best of my ability; still, I could feel my face lighting up like a Charizard's tail, at the embarrassment of nearly getting caught daydreaming. Of course I knew that, this was exactly what we had been learning in this class: on the vagaries of Pokémon statistics, and how they affected their attacking capabilities. Sure, my grades weren't stellar, especially compared to the likes of Crys, but then and again, she was the one walking around with her nose perpetually buried in a book…and Platinum…was just Platinum. Who used to read at least ten books a day. Thank god for people like Sapph, is all I can say. Seriously, what was happening to me? It wasn't as though I got into a funk like this all the time. Heck, I was known for the ability to think on my feet, and to think fast, and talk my way out of anything. Stupid New Guy and his unruffled air, it interfered with my train of thought…_

**- - x x x x x - -**

Well yeah. So since his first day here, about term ago, I had gotten to know him somewhat better, all in subconscious preparation for this new challenge that I had; despite my best attempts, which would have reduced any other hot-blooded male to a helpless mass willing to pander to my every whim, he merely muttered short, succinct answers to my most innocently pressing of questions, and seemed blind to those charms that would have rendered any other boy incoherent. Tch. Well, that said, perhaps it was a good thing that he was so tricky. Because of that mini-bet I had made with the others, this would doubtless be the hugest challenge I could ever, or would ever take. Of course, it wasn't exactly habit to make petty sport of pursuing the fragile hearts of skittish, commitment-phobic men, but it had been a while since I had used my talents, and I relished honing them on someone like _him_.

The others had not been so sure about it, though. Yellow, for one, had flatly refused to have anything to do with it. I remembered sitting in the arts room watching her paint, along with Crys, Sapph and Platinum, flush from the victory of finally getting Green to deign to speak to me, after hunting him down…no, wait, that wasn't quite right. _He_ came to _me_. Hmm, that's a start. It had taken three whole hours, but it was all worth it. Grandson of Professor Oak indeed! _That _would be quite a catch.

"Remind me…why are you going to antagonize the poor boy again?" she asked distractedly, entirely forgetting about the fact that he was at least a year older than her; leaning back critically from her canvas to survey the composition of her piece, she absently raised her hand, tugging a charcoal pencil from behind her ear, and smudging her golden-blonde hair with a streak of black in the process. We watched in silence as, with brow furrowed, Yellow carefully added a few careful lines here and there, before turning to beam at us with satisfaction, though upon catching sight of what was known as my 'Persian on the hunt' expression, shook her head bewilderedly.

"Because it'll be a challenge to get someone like him even remotely interested in social events!" I enthused, waggling a finger at her. "You saw the look on his face…uhoho, maybe you didn't…but when Fantina started talking about the upcoming ball, ah, it was _priceless_." It was true. As the elaborately-coiffed part-time teacher had passionately entered an ardent spiel about what had come to be one of the most anticipated events on the school calendar, the look that settled quite comfortably upon Green's features was not, like some of the other boys', one of sly knowingness, or awkward embarrassment, but, rather, one of utmost horror.

"Which exactly goes back to the point Yellow was trying to make," Crys hastily added, setting her book down, "why are you so keen on dragging him to something he clearly doesn't want to attend? Why not just go with one of your flings?"

I sighed. "Because they won't be a challenge! All I have to do is look at them, and _snap_—" at that, I snapped my fingers, ignoring Sapphire's stage whisper of "Persian used Mean Look…!": "—and they will be putty in my hands. But in this case, ahahaha, it will take every single ounce and shred of my feminine wit and guiles to get him to _ask me to go with him_."

Grinning confidently at my grand plan, I gazed at them in turn, waiting for the others to acknowledge the validity of my point. Platinum frowned. "You have a very odd and twisted notion of fun," she said delicately, lacing her fingers together and resting her chin on them, proceeding to stare at me with raised eyebrows.

I chuckled. "You just realized? I must say, he makes for wonderful eye-candy. Which is, really, the very reason I'm pursuing him. And, hopefully, still _available_ eye-candy, unlike the likes of Volkner."

She persevered nonetheless. "Well, no, but think about the rationality of your argument. We are talking about _you_ undertaking a challenge that would involve making a well-nigh asexual male suddenly take at least some minute degree of interest in the upcoming ball, and then making him like you enough to ask _you_ to it, instead of the other way around." At that, the dark-haired girl broke off slightly, clearing her throat carefully. "Not that I'm doubting your, ah, _skills_ in any way, but nevertheless…" Stopping short, she frowned at me. "Are you serious? Physical attraction is all you're concerned about?"

"Nevertheless nothing," I proclaimed triumphantly, ignoring her last question. "It'll work, or my name's not Blue."

**- - x x x x x - -**

_The first time I spoke to Green, it was something of an accident. Sure, it had been a few hours before I decided to make him the target of my personal challenge, but it was an event to be remembered nonetheless._

_As usual, before lunch, I had stopped by my locker, if only to dump some books in it; I wondered, briefly, if I should head off to the library to study for a while after school today: Morty had hinted that we would have an upcoming surprise test, possibly this week or next week – seriously, he should know, he's the one that sets them, geez – and as such, we were to be prepared. However…the prospect of charming someone else – who, though? Sidney? Or maybe Aaron? Hmm…or perhaps even Falkner. Didn't they have Morty for one of their classes as well? Which was weird. He was just like, a little bit older than them. Put new meaning into the phrase 'grad teacher', that did. Perhaps I'd ask Aaron, Sidney was kinda intimidating, and I hadn't spoken to him much before. And Falkner was probably far too straight-laced to ever deign to give me test answers, what a shame…oh, the perils of being the son of a police officer, and keeping up with his father. Not to mention, Janine would probably kill me in my sleep or something; ah, the dilemmas – into giving me the answer sheet was a the appealing option, by a large, large margin. I guess I could try my luck with Bill. He _was_ a nice guy, if not for his awkwardness around girls, and his all-consuming love for technology, and renowned for his phenomenal grades (and not-so phenomenal physical prowess. Practically every single girl could outrun him, in skirts, to boot. Poor guy.)._

_Before I knew it, I found my mind wandering back to the New Guy, or Green, as I should call him. After class had ended, and I had swallowed my embarrassment somewhat, I had attempted to introduce myself, and to thank my inadvertent savior, only to find that he had scooted off remarkably quickly: one minute, I had sneaked a glance to the back of the room to check that he was there, and the next minute, he was nowhere to be found. Weird. I had spent the rest of my morning surreptitiously scouting high and low for him, he was nowhere to be found. Frustrating, too – he was quite a looker, and I was keen to snag him for myself._

"_Excuse me."_

_Oh jeez. Couldn't a girl use her locker in peace? I swung the door shut, ready to reprimand whichever guy it was, but found the words stuck in my throat as soon as I caught sight of who it was. "H-hey! You're that new boy!"_

_A look of annoyance creased his brow, and he sighed. Though looking distinctly irritated, there was still no denying the fact that he was distractingly good-looking. "Yes. I am fully aware of that, and do not need anyone to repeat that fact to me."_

_I decided it was time to adapt the circumstances to my advantage. Hitching on a megawatt smile – which Wattson would doubtless have heartily approved of, ha ha ha – I beamed at him, holding out a hand. "Well hello there! Sorry for being so blunt, ahaha…I don't know what's gotten into me today. M'name's Blue. You were in Surge's class, weren't you?"_

_He narrowed his eyes slightly, but nodded curtly at me. "I remember you. The girl in front of me, right?" Why was he asking me? He knew full well. Hmm. Two can play at this game, Pretty Boy. "Surge asked you that question about Flareon's highest stat."_

"_Uh-huh. Thanks for helping me out! That was really _sweet _of you. So, Green, right?" I had to salvage the situation, before it turned against my favour, as well as get started on my plans to get to know him better._

_New Guy nodded, looking rather bored. "No problem. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get to my locker."_

_Well, this first conversation was a disaster, but it was better than nothing. But sooner or later, he _would_ be mine. I would see to that. "Oh, sorry! Well, I gotta run. Have a good day! And, oh, once again, thank you sooo much!" Oh. My. Goodness. I can't believe I just said that. As I hastily scooted off, I saw him nod a grudging thanks. _

"_It was nothing," he muttered._

_Well, _that _went well._

**- - x x x x x - -**

"It certainly did," Sapph said bluntly, rolling her eyes; before she could say anything more, though, she muttered something incomprehensible, and pulled out her phone. Without missing a beat, she flipped it open, pressed it to her ear, and bellowed into the mouthpiece at the top of her lungs: "WHAT DO YOU WANT _NOW_?!"

Crystal and I exchanged meaningful looks. "It's Ruby," she mouthed. I snickered. Despite the outward love-hate thing they had going on, it was quite clear to all and sundry that they were very much _in love_, even if they took great pains not to show it. Sure, they had this huge on-off relationship going on and on, but it was inevitable that they would return to one another. It made me kind of sad to see them: they were obviously so close, and I envied that.

Ugh, something's wrong with me. I'm getting all mushy and sappy. Whatever happened to the old Blue? The old Blue, who used to be compared to a Delcatty in that she was too proud to allow herself to be tied down with anyone? Tch. I was growing soft in my old age, it had to be—

"Whaddaya mean, where's yer accessory box and make-up case?! Why would _I_ friggin' know, of all people?! And why're _you_ askin' me where's yer sewing kit is?!" Though Sapph's accent had diminished in strength somewhat, it tended to return in full force when she got angry or agitated. In this case, I'm guessing it was a combination of the two.

If we all didn't know better, we could have sworn Ruby was gay. In their relationship, it was…sort of like that between an athlete and a patient, long-suffering housewife, except in this case, _Sapphire_ was the jock, and _Ruby_ was the…house-husband, so to speak. Whilst she was the one in the athletics team, basketball team, had placed first in practically every cross-country race the school had participated in, and had singlehandedly completed this year's triathlon in record time, Ruby was the one who fussed over her all the time – much to her perpetual and eternal chagrin – and, to cheer her up, or celebrate her victories, cooked _the _most amazing meals for her, and whatnot. It was hilarious, and truth be told, they were just like an elderly married couple. Ha. I'd kill to see her expression when I tell her that.

Platinum shook her head and sighed, not wanting to listen to what she nonchalantly dubbed 'another lovers' argument' raging behind her, and settled down to prepare her notes for _yet another _speech. Being in the debating club, and continuously being chosen as the school's representative for a lot of elocutions and whatnot meant she was constantly honing her skills at oration, and it went without saying that she usually came first in every single in-class speech we had, and also ended up as Lucian's favourite student. Seeing as how, you know, he was head of the English department as well as a drama teacher. I honestly don't know why she even bothered to prepare speeches. She could ad-lib almost as well as I could, which is saying something.

Thus, Crys and I left them to bicker for a while, whilst watching Yellow paint; though the youngest out of the bunch, it was easy to see where her talent lay, and not for the first time, I wondered where exactly I fitted in. We were a weird bunch, to be sure, with Sapph being the jock through and through – she'd probably be better off with the other jock-y people, like Misty, who was in the school swim team, Maylene, who could beat up anyone in the school if she wanted to [as well as out-eat everyone put together, and still not gain a single pound…enviouuuus], surfer-dude Brawley, who won water polo, lifesaving and surfing awards for the school by the dozen, and Brock, who did a spot of weightlifting in his free time [a _spot _is an understatement. Seriously.] – but instead, chose to hang with us. Same with Platinum, who would have been right at home with the linguistics people and the all-round 'smart' kids, and Yellow, who would similarly have mixed better with the artsy-fartsy people. Now, from what I was saying, it might seem like Crys and I were the losers, but that's far from the truth: Crys is a superb all-rounder, so much so that it wasn't even funny. She was [and still is] in the athletics team, cycles cross-country, does kickboxing, won lots of first places in competitions for all of those, and is like, one of the top students of the school.

Gee. Looking at all my friends kind of makes me feel bad just _thinking _about myself. I mean, seriously. All of them excelled in some field or another, and what was I really good at? Like, really, _really_ good at, other than having a smart mouth and quick wit? Yeah, that's right, not much. Sure, my grades were okay, nothing stellar, and I…well, _cheat_ a little bit [let's not call it _cheat_, shall we? It's such an awful word! Maybe something like _extra help_ sounds a little bit less damning.], but at the end of the day, it all boils down to the fact that I don't actually like studying. It's boring, and I would much rather be out doing more interesting things. Like swindling people. Oh god, that makes me sound like such a conniving devil, doesn't it? But it's actually pretty fun, once you have it down to an art. And on the other hand, I hate sport with a passion, and the only reason I might wander anywhere _near_ a football pitch or anything is probably to see the guys strut their stuff. Mmmm. How's _that_ for eye-candy?

Despite the fact that Sapph had turned away from us and was now hunched over her phone and whispering angrily into the mouthpiece, it was still possible to hear what she was saying: it is with the utmost affection with which I say this, but Sapphy…is not known for being quiet. Calling her boisterous would be putting it very kindly, and I gotta say, that girl's got a hell of a set of lungs. And her definition of a whisper? It's like a loud speaking voice for the rest of us. Sort of.

Crys caught my eye, and raised three fingers. _Three._

If Platinum could say so without arousing Sapph's wrath, she would probably have mentioned something about her looking like an Arbok poised to strike.

Crys folded over one finger, wiggling the remaining two at us. _Two._

Yellow was still squinting at her canvas with utmost concentration, and I felt sorry for the rude shock she was about to get.

Sapph didn't seem to realize that we were all staring at her with baited breath.

Crys held up one finger, wearing a simultaneously amused and triumphant grin, never mind the fact that she was trying to keep it from taking full possession of her face. _One. We have liftoff!_

Well, _liftoff_ didn't really describe it. Oh no, that wouldn't do it justice. More like, Sapph nearly _exploded_, and went ballistic.

"I DON'T HAVE YER FRIGGIN' STUFF, WHY'D'YOU KEEP ASKING ME?! ARE YOU DEAF?! WELL, ARE YA? IT'S NOT LIKE I HAVE ANY INCLINATUN—" At that, she suddenly stopped mid-rant, and I assumed Ruby had managed to cut in and correct her. Looking at her, and watching her jab a finger at the empty air to emphasize her point, it seemed like she was about to have an aneurysm. "INCLINATUN, INCLINASHUN, INCLINATION, WHATEVER. BUT IT'S NOT AS IF I FEEL LIKE DRESSING UP MY POKÉMON TO BE ALL GIRLY!" I swear, I could almost feel my hair blowing back in a gale-force wind from the strength of that tirade, and could only wonder how the poor guy bore with it. I really don't. I mean, I love Sapph and all, she's great fun to be around, but still, it's hard to be at the receiving end of her raving. Poor Yellow took the brunt of it, and jumped almost a foot into the air, upsetting her colour palette.

With a sigh, and little much else in lieu of a reaction, we [that is, Platinum, Crys and I] watched as she hopped down from her chair to retrieve her stuff. By now, we were all pretty much used to Ruby and Sapph's most explosive relationship, and never mind the fact that it seemed like the two got along about as well as cats and dogs. Well, I amend that statement. _Most _cats and dogs. In a way, it was sort of cute, though. They'd been together for years now, and were the longest-standing couple in the school, so regardless of the arguments [_lovers' spats_, hahahaha], I suppose they showed their love in different ways. Such as hefting someone up and threatening to dump him, fully-clothed, into the swimming pool if he didn't stop attempting to beautify her Pokémon. Ah, that brought tears to my eyes, that did.

We watched as, with an angry curse, Sapph snapped her delicate-looking clamshell phone shut with a deft flick of her wrist; it must've been made to withstand Tauros rampages or something, because _I_ for one know she'd have broken it by now otherwise. Meeting our eyes, she grinned apologetically. "Well, what can ya say," she said flippantly, before suddenly turning serious. "Now, Blue, are you really sure you want to undertake such a challenge? Like, _really_?"

Duh, of course I did. Oh Sapphy, you can be so doubting sometimes. I proceeded to say as much, only to be greeted by a rather affronted expression. "And how exactly are you going to get your plan, if any, to succeed?" This time, Platinum decided to interrupt, catching sight of Sapph's incredulous expression. I shrugged. 

"I dunno. I'll make it up as I go, I guess."

Yellow sighed, before resting her cheek against the table, having abandoned all attempts to clean up her canvas. "I'll just tell them it's post-modernist impressionism influenced by Picasso or something," she mumbled with an air of defeat; however, she wasn't done, as she looked up at me, a puzzled look on her face. "No, really, though. He's going to be a tough nut to crack. You'll need a good plan, and a fallback, just in case. Oh goodness. Why am I even helping you with your diabolical plans?"

"I happen to love challenges," I repeated, sounding a tad sniffy; Sapph merely shrugged. "Suit yerself."

"Oh ho ho." Crossing my arms, I drew myself up to my full height to survey the rest of them. "You'll be eating your own words soon, oh ye of little faith."

Sapph smirked. "Bring it. How many million Pokédollars are you willing to bet?" Platinum snorted elegantly at that. "Gambling! How plebeian. Your money would be better-spent on increasing your knowledge."

I grinned at her. "Hey, hey, I _am _increasing my knowledge. Consider this a social experiment."

Crys frowned. "That poor boy."

**- - x x x x x - -**

Elsewhere, in a different place, a certain boy named Green frowned. "I have the funny feeling that…" 

"That?" his childhood friend, Red, prompted, brow furrowing as he gazed at the other bloke, eyebrows raised.

"That something wicked this way comes."

**- - x x x x x - -**

**BACKCHAT**_**!**_**: Dude like wtf, it's about time you started writing things again, R.V you epitome of fail. WELL YES. I've been playing Pokémon a lot lately [Diamonndddd! Pearllll! SOULSILVERRR 8D] and as a result, it shows in my writing. And, srsly, gotta love the Pokémon Special manga. BECAUSE I AM A SHAMELESS OLDRIVALSHIPPER, HERE'S AN ABSURDLY LONG FIC FOR YOU :'D WHOO-HOO.**

**Okay well. Better stop talking. OFF TO FINISH MY OTHER FICS I GOOOOO~**


	2. step two: demanding a tutor

**Disclaimer: I do not and never will own Pokémon, or Pokémon Special. -weeps in corner-**

**- - x x x x x - -**

It wasn't enough that I had to cope with her attention span, or lack thereof, within the classrooms; if anything, she seemed to be everywhere I looked, even when I was fairly certain the female in question was not actually her. Over the course of the three months since my transfer, I had already been paired with her by a rather unreasonably smug-looking Koga a fair few times, though even during the times I managed to escape having to work with her, I always had the uncomfortable feeling I was being watched. It was like sitting exams presided over by Agatha, and knowing her Gengar was peering over your shoulder to make sure you were looking at your own paper, as opposed to others, and I can't say I enjoyed the sensation.

On the most part, that _Blue_ girl wasn't half bad to be working with. She had the odd tendency to space out, and stare at nothing in particular, only surfacing from her reverie when a teacher pointed at her, or when class was dismissed. It's a wonder she even managed to get this far, really. More often than not, I would catch her looking off into the distant field, where, at some point, a group of students were training under the watchful eye of Bruno; doubtless she was admiring the 'sights', so to speak, and had better things to focus on than the likes of unimportant schoolwork. Still, though I didn't have to save her hide all that often, which in itself was amazing, owing to her inclination to daydreaming. What I would give to know what went on within the minds of women, indeed.

I glanced up from the textbook in front of me to appraise her; to the casual observer, she was doing what any normal student in a library was doing – researching subject matter. However, I had the oddest feeling she definitely wasn't doing that – if the lurid pink cover peeking out from beneath the textbook said anything.

She glanced up, catching my eye, grinning in the most infuriatingly coquettish manner possible; before I could so much as frown back, Red elbowed me in the ribs, jerking his head towards Lucian, who was advancing our way. Ah, the perils of having a Psychic Pokémon expert as a teacher.

In all fairness, though, this class was surprisingly quiet today, which in itself was a miracle; seeing as how both Ruby and Sapphire here, it went without saying, as a general rule, that each lesson did not pass without incident. Just yesterday, she had attempted to throw his make-up box out of the window, for reasons which remained unknown; she would have succeeded, had it not been for the fact that he had been hanging on to it for dear life, stubbornly refusing to let it go.

**- - x x x x x - -**

"_For the last time, I'm gonna repeat m'self. Stop. Freaking. Trying to. Pansy-ify. My Pokémon."_

"_Let go of my accessories kit! Ugh, how can you have your Pokémon traipsing around like that, covered in all manners of grime and muck, my goodness. And do you really have to participate in the Pokéthlon? All that running and jumping and wrestling and block-smashing, it'll give them unsightly muscles, as if they don't already have unsightly muscles already…" _

"_Oh? Well, lessee how your pretty princess sparkly coats will fare against my unsightly muscles then. Bring it on! My Chaka could send your Nana flying. Since when did strutting around and posing help in real life?"_

"_As opposed to how pushing other Pokémon out of sumo-wrestling circles is relevant?"_

"_There, you said it! At least my Pokémon can fight and hold their own in battle, despite terrain and type disadvant'ges."_

"_At least mine can look beautiful whilst dazzling an appreciative audience!"_

"_Settle down, you two." It seemed as though Lucian had come to find these squabbles every bit as entertaining as his students did; he made no real attempt shut them up, only watching with mild interest as they rallied. In a sense, this was like watching a tennis match, only with invisible rackets and balls, and plenty more grunting and screeching—I mean, arguing._

_It was truly amazing how those two stayed together, really. From what Gold told me, their 'relationship' was something more along the lines of an on-off train wreck. And yet, they invariably made up, and, in those few honeymoon days – or hours, really – it was amazing how pleasant they were to each other._

**- - x x x x x - -**

"Looks like the two lovebirds patched up recently," Gold observed idly, slouching low in his chair. The duo in question were sitting a comfortable distance apart, Sapphire for once not attempting to throttle Ruby with his own interestingly resilient shoelaces, though he looked rather exhausted, and was currently half-passed out, with his head pillowed by a fat textbook. Silver merely grunted in response, not bothering to look up from the nine-odd pages of notes he had already written.

"Dude, what're you trying to do, re-write the _Iliad_?" He made a grab for Silver's sizable stack of paper, only to have them wrenched from his grasp.

"Yes, well, unlike you," Silver snapped, "I'm not the one reduced to buying past test papers from Sidney and _still managing to fail them_. And you wonder why your Typhlosion has yet to learn Blast Burn. It's somewhat unfair to your Pokémon to say this, but _like trainer, like Pokémon. _Only I think it has a higher probability of learning that move by next Monday than you do of passing Clair's next assessment."

"Shut up, the both of you," I muttered, cradling my head in my hands.

"Why so grumpy? Still worried about the upcoming ball? I myself can't wait. The food! The fun! And most of all, the girls!" Even without seeing his face, it was easy to imagine the expression Gold was wearing: one of utmost daydreaming joy.

"…don't even talk to me about that _thing_." The mere fact that I had to attend it only made my life so much more miserable. Why in the blazes was it considered a compulsory school event? Pity that it counted for school attendance, otherwise I would have been more than happy to give it a miss. The dreaded event was, to be fair, about four months away, though everyone had begun to talk about it, as though it were every bit as important as the exams.

"Whyever not? Everyone's all psyched up about it. I bet we'll finally even get to see Sapph in a dress. Mind-blowing isn't it?" Gold chuckled under his breath. "There's a certain someone I'd like to see in a dress too," he said, almost wistfully. I shot him a look.

"Let me guess. Janine?" Red had decided to join the conversation; watching as Gold turned purple, he chuckled. "Kidding, kidding." Ugh, Red and his guessing games. It would be less agonising and embarrassing if he was actually good at it, though.

"No! She'd probably poison my lunch if I even so much as mention the word 'ball' and 'partner' to her. It's not like I know her, anyways. That, and Falkner would probably feed me to his Skarmory. AND! Koga would have another excuse to make AP Stats and Natures even _worse_ than it already is. Which is saying something, I'd have you know."

"Which reminds me," I interjected, "why are you even taking AP Stats? From what you told me, you're not even _good_ at it."

"Well, yes, but it's all in the name of getting closer to my prey, y'see…"

It seemed as though Silver had not caught that last bit. "Then who're you going with, pray tell? The sugar plum fairy's pet Wormadam?"

"Why yes, Silver, I actually would like to go on a date with a Pokémon that…um, dances…on sugar plums. No, dumbass. Why? Are you planning to go with the tooth fairy's Sharpedo? I'm sure you'd be such a hit with _any _of the girls here." He snickered at the other boy's outraged expression; Silver looked annoyed to the point of being temporarily stunned into silence. "I bet you'd match well with Candice though. Har har har. One cold-blooded cold fish, and the other a hot-blooded Ice Queen…wait, that didn't make sense."

"Oh, yeah, you're a riot," Silver hissed sourly, growing steadily more waspish in contrast to Gold, "keep it up, and you'll make as good comedians as Diamond and Pearl." Crumpling up a sheet of paper into a tiny ball, he threw it at Gold's head with untoward force; Gold had just opened his mouth to protest, and had he not hastily clamped it shut, would doubtless have ended up enjoying the taste of notepaper. "If I were you, I'd try to make myself seem more appealing to the certain someone in question before jumping her and demanding she be my partner. Just a helpful hint."

"Yeah, yeah, like you're such a regular Casanova," Gold snorted. "Casanova Silver. Good grief, those are two words that should never, ever be used in the same sentence."

Red watched them with utmost amusement, before turning back to me. "No, really, what's eating you? I swear, the closer we get to this, the grumpier you get."

"Red," I began through gritted teeth, "_you remember._ Our last school and—"

"Ohh yeah, that. What, you're still on about that? It was about two years ago!"

I grunted dismissively. "Once bitten, twice shy. I promised to myself, never again."

"Wait, what was this?" Diverting his attention away from taunting Silver, Gold stared at me. "Is this about a _giiiiirl?_"

"What? No, of course not. Don't be stupid."

"Actually, it is." Red grinned broadly. Damn him. He was as transparent as glass, though, so I guess even if he tried to backtrack it'd only make Gold even more curious. "It was a school dance, and Green got—"

At this, Gold leaned in even further. "What? What? What? Stood up? Got his foot impaled by a stiletto? Stepped on the poor girl's feet? Talked only about himself? Got drunk? Made a conga line? Said inappropriate things to a teacher? Tried to build a ladder out of the tablecloths and abseil from the balcony? Got mauled by a randomly rampaging herd of Ursaring whilst in the midst of attempting to save your partner?"

Silver stared at him, bursting out in a short fit of disbelieving laughter. "So _that's _what you've been doing over the mid-term break: watching ridiculous movies. Never knew you were fond of hammy, romantic drivel like that. But then and again, I should have expected it. Were you imagining yourself as the hero, with _her _as your leading lady? Picturing yourself as a debonair swashbuckler, no doubt—"

"Sorry, mate, but I'm already too much of a debonair swashbuckler. As for _you_—"

"Do you even _know_ what those two words mean?"

Thankfully, I was saved from having to say anything more – and, for that matter, Red was saved from having the living daylights being kicked out of him – by the bell. As Lucian dismissed us, and leaving Gold and Silver to glare daggers at one another, I glowered at my erstwhile 'friend'. "You're a moron. If I could, I'd kick your sorry ass from here to the middle of Eterna Forest."

With a valiant attempt at keeping his face straight, he patted my shoulder in what he evidently thought was a reassuring manner. "Relax, man, I'll never spill. I know we weren't the best of chums when we were kids, but all that's behind us now, I tell you."

"Huh. Really. Doesn't seem like it."

"And, mind you, Eterna Forest is an awfully long way away. Ilex Forest is one thing, but _Eterna_? Good luck with that. Speaking of kicking, football: Surge wants to know why you haven't been attending practice. I think he misses your face, he's been looking quite glum lately, ahahaha…"

**- - x x x x x - -**

"Say hey!" No sooner had I reached my locker, when Flint seemingly appeared from nowhere, grinning broadly at me. I surveyed him warily.

"What in the blazes are you doing here? Didn't you graduate last year…?"

"Ahaha, blazes. Gotta love that phrase. A-anyways! How's school life? I heard the ball's coming up soon. Man, I miss that."

"You only miss it because you somehow managed to set fire to the venue," Volkner said drily, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he stopped beside Flint. "We're here to pick up some old assignments and stuff."

Flint smirked at that, breaking out into a spontaneous fit of coughing that sounded suspiciously like '_Jasmine!_', causing Volkner to turn pink. Needless to say, it was a colour that did not suit him too well. "…let me reiterate. Mr. Hothead is here due to some woes regarding his coursework. Cynthia thinks he doesn't have it in him to complete her notoriously advanced _History 1141_ course. Not that I blame her. Don't you have to find Wallace?" he added pointedly, glaring at a spot above Flint's shoulder; needless to say, he was ignored.

Flint sighed wistfully. "I remember on our last day…say, Volkner, do you remember? How we toilet papered the tree in the middle of the quad…you know, the one with no leaves and about fifty billion bare branches. Man, it was _so easy _to toilet paper _that_…"

"That was _you_. Not _us_."

"Whatever. And then I…um…well, Flareon…he set the tree on fire."

"Not to mention, almost burned your hair off. What were you thinking, storing a Pokéball in your afro?!" Turning to face me, the blond grimaced. "See what I mean? I tell everyone he's irresponsible, and they don't believe me. You have no idea how many times he nearly blew up Blaine's chemistry lab."

"Oh, shut up. I was Blaine's prize student. You're just jealous because Surge always yelled at you."

Really now. Just how many arguments did I have to see before the end of the day? Before I could remind them of the fact that they were supposedly here for a reason, a certain brown-haired girl appeared from someplace behind Flint.

"Well hello!" she exclaimed cheerily, studying them with curiosity. "What're you two doing here? Is it for past assignments? If so, then I heard Wallace was going to be clearing out his files, to make space for the new pile of portfolios he's getting in something soon. I'd go get them sharpish, if I were you."

Volkner frowned. "Flint, you idiot, you told me they were going to be here until—oh, forget it. I should've learned by now to stop trusting what you say. Thanks, Blue. Later, Green." Grabbing hold of the back of his friend's shirt, he dragged him off, muttering under his breath.

"What a charming duo," she giggled. "Such a shame they left here already, though. They always made for good entertainment."

Good grief. Why was she here? I proceeded to ask her as much, and was utterly unprepared for the reaction I got from her.

"What? How could you possibly have forgotten?" Gasping theatrically, she gave me the most injured and yet accusatory of looks. "We're working together for that project Bertha assigned us! Um…what was it again? Oh yes. _Geography of the Sinnoh Region and its Characteristics._"

"I know _that_," I sighed, "but it's…oh, fine. Where was I meant to go to find you?"

She grinned triumphantly. "Cafeteria."

"…obnoxious girl. You could just have told me when we were at the library, and save me the trouble of…wait. Why the cafeteria? It's the noisiest place in the whole school."

"Ah, but where's the fun in that? It's much more entertaining to track you down and ambush you like this. Also, we're going there because Platina agreed to help us. _She's _there because she refuses to miss Diamond and Pearl's routine." Was I imagining things, or was there the most unnerving of glints in her eyes as she winked at me?

"…tch. Lead on."

**- - x x x x x - -**

"When you think of the ecology of the Spring Path…" Ruffling his already absurdly rumpled blond hair, Pearl groaned disparagingly. "This is hopeless! Why did Bertha have to give you guys such a boring topic? And why did we let Missy make us cancel our routine for today?! If you guys don't manage to ace this project, I'm fining y'all thirty million Pokédollars, you hear me? Ugh, where's Dia? Probably off getting a third round of lunch _already_. This is extreme."

"What a pleasant way of speaking about your own home region," I said drily, flipping one textbook shut and starting on another. "Aren't you meant to know all about Sinnoh?"

"The Spring Path is a small area in the Sinnoh region located south of Veilstone City," Platina began, "and is rumoured to be where the legendary renegade Pokémon, Giratina, appears. The main landmark within the Spring Path is a labyrinthine cavern, known as the Turnback Cave, which, historians believe, has ties with the Distortion World in which Giratina resides. Venturing into it is said to be a highly unnerving experience, due to the eerie silence which fills the area, as well as the types of Pokémon themselves that appear there."

Pearl goggled at her. "Y-yeah, um, what she said."

Blue frowned as she resumed taking notes at breakneck speed, flapping a hand at Platina. "Slow down!"

"A plethora of powerful, high-levelled Pokémon populates the Spring Path, particularly—"

Before she could finish, a rather lost-looking Ruby ambled up to us, looking far from his usual dapper self, and squinting at us as though he couldn't quite make us out; a rather long, awkward silence passed, until he grinned broadly, looking relieved.

"Oh, thank goodness, it's you guys. I was worried I barged in on the wrong group of people _again_." With a grimace and a sigh, he sat down beside me, cradling his head in his hands. To be fair, he looked rather worse for wear, and I wondered what he had done this time.

"What happened? Are you all right?" Blue scooted over to inspect him, now rendering my side of the table uncomfortably cramped. Ruby sighed noisily.

"Sapph woke me up at four this morning to train with her for next week's inter-school Pokéthlon, and refused to take no to an answer."

Pearl snorted with laughter. "Why, what'd she do? Throw stones at your window?"

Ruby groaned. "If only. Dad let her in – and nobody really needs to wonder why – and she proceeded to nearly break my bed by jumping onto it. Then, to make matters worse, she made me jog around the field with her for the next two hours before letting me get ready for school. Needless to say, I didn't have enough time, and it was only a few minutes before she screamed at me to hurry up, and, well, here I am. Sans glasses _and _contacts. I can't say it's been a great day, sitting right at the front of the classrooms and trying to see what's on the boards."

At this point, I was honestly glad I was not involved with anyone at the moment. "Well, at least she hasn't been threatening to roll you down Mount Mortar today. _Yet_. Looks like a personal record for you two, so congratulations. Try to keep this streak up, will you?"

He smiled weakly at me. "I'll try. But honestly, it's getting harder and harder to ignore the condition of her Pokémon! Do you reckon I should polish her Aggron's scales someday? It's looking a bit rugged and craggy, with some rather unsightly chips in his armour…"

"What's this I'm hearin' about Ronono?"

"Eeeyargh!" Utterly taken by surprised, Ruby nearly slid under the table by the close proximity of his most delightful lady friend. Staring at her with a most absurd Stantler-in-the-headlights look, he clutched his shirt, slowly extricating himself from his most uncomfortable position. "You nearly gave me heart failure!"

Sapphire snorted. "Which means ya haven't been training enough, ya pansy."

Looking wary, he frowned at her. "What're you here for? I haven't done anything to your Pokémon…oh goodness. This is about the Pokéthlon, right?"

Platinum carefully closed one of her textbooks, before looking up. "As a general consensus, we all came to the conclusion that we need to study for the upcoming exams."

"You don't say." They were less than two months away, and yet everyone was talking about that damned dance. I swear, the next time anyone mentioned it, I will drown myself in the Lake of Rage.

"Oh yes!" The Obnoxious Woman turned, leaning across Ruby to smile broadly at me. "I was meaning to ask you. My grades aren't doing too badly at the moment, but not too well either. I was wondering if you could perhaps maybe help me with a spot of revision?"

Good grief. What was I supposed to say? As a thousand thoughts and possible responses – some of them rather unkind, I might add: would that make me seem even more churlish? Probably – occurred to me, I realised everyone else at the table had grown unnaturally silent, with the exception of Pearl, who, it seemed, had just remembered about an overdue art assignment and was now busy scribbling something on construction paper with Sharpies, complete with loud, rather inappropriate squeaks. If anything, the two other girls – Sapphire and Platinum – had now diverted their respective attentions from nagging Ruby and perusing a travel journal article, with their scrutiny now being directed towards me. Why was I suddenly suspicious that this whole thing was a setup? I should have asked her why Platinum was helping us. Fair enough, she was from Sinnoh, and therefore knew a lot about it, but that didn't mean I was clueless about it, either.

"Since when did you care much about academics?" From what Red had told me, Blue was more interested with…alternate methods of success. Such as coaxing people to sell her their papers. It would suffice to say that it worked most of the time.

"Wee-ell, I decided it was time I stopped taking pointers from…um, certain sources, and started actually being serious about my studies." She shrugged, before gazing at me with the most entreating, imploring look I had ever seen. "Pretty please? I'm sure you'll be able to explain things a lot better than Morty can…"

"What's wrong with his teaching? He's just a bit vague, and if you _paid more attention in class_, you'd be able to follow just fine."

"That's beside the point!" By now, I was acutely aware of the fact that we were now the subject of interest for those in our immediate vicinity. Even the backdrop of Sharpie squeaks had stopped, and I realised I really missed that sound. I suppose this was making me look ridiculously _ungentlemanly_, not that I ever proclaimed myself to be one to begin with.

Sighing, I conceded defeat. "Fine. Give me a time and place."

Blue flashed me an insouciant grin. "Every Monday and Wednesday, at…oh, let's say after school-ish? Four o'clock sounds good. Deal or no deal?"

I gritted my teeth. "Deal." It was hard to feel quite so wretchedly defeated and to act as ungracious, though, when she beamed at me. I averted my eyes, determined not to look at her. "Don't be late."

**- - x x x x x - -**

"So, Green. What's this I hear about you having study sessions with Blue?"

I mentally slapped myself for at least not having the prudence to admit defeat in a less crowded area. "Long story, she pigeonholed me. Why do you want to ask, when you already know about it?"

Red shrugged, before resuming pushing his bike. "Feels like the old times, eh? When we were kids, walking home together…" He grinned. "Though back then we weren't talking about having study sessions with girls, but, rather, about punching each other silly." Suddenly serious, he paused _yet again_. "Ah, but Blue, she's not half bad, you know what I mean?"

I stopped and stared at him. "_No_, I don't know what you mean. Who do you think I am, Sabrina? Or Morty?"

"Jeez, keep your hair on. What I mean to say is, she's not as bad as you make her out to be."

"Yeah? And how'd you know?"

At this, he turned pink, turning to face the sunset. "Ah, it's nothing. Lessee…when was it when we lost contact? About two years ago, wasn't it, when I moved to this school? Well that year we had a bit of a casual relationship, nothing serious. I mean, face it. We were never serious about one another, really, and I guess I was just kinda curious, y'know?"

"Uh-huh, I know. She's a flirt, and has sort of been around." I shoved my hands into my pockets and started to walk again, wondering why I hadn't brought a scarf. Stupid deceptive autumn weather.

"Yeah, something like that. No! Not in the way you're thinking, moron. She just likes playing, if you catch my drift, and she moves on soon after. Bit like a Butterfree, really. A social butterfly, _and_ she also likes being free. Sounds to me like she's been using the Cute Charm on you lately. Sadly, the great Green seems to be Oblivious." Laughing uproariously, it was a while before he quieted down. Dia and Pearl would have been so proud their puns and whatnot were catching on.

"So what was your point? Just wanted to tell me what I didn't ask to know?"

"Green, stop being a grumpy old Krabby. For all her musical-chair-boyfriends thing going on—"

"Gee, that's awfully charming. _Musical-chair-boyfriends thing._ Now I really feel better about hearing your snippets of supposedly useful information."

"Oh, shut up. As I was saying, she's good people, ya get me? She likes playing around, and is rather silly at times, but she's a nice girl. Give her a chance, mate."

"You make it sound as though I'm getting married to her and discovered skeletons in her closet. Red, seriously, if you know what's good for you, stop talking, or I'm going to whack you. And no, Chuck doesn't miss my face."

"Yeah well. All I'm saying is, be nice, jeez. Shouldn't be too hard. Besides, she seems kinda like your type, and I suggested—"

"What?!" I stopped short to goggle at him. "Are you serious? My type?! My _type_?! I don't even have a type! Especially obnoxious, interfering, pesky…oh, I see now. Red, I'm going to send you flying to the middle of next year if you continue playing matchmaker."

He chortled, leaning forwards to thump me on the back. "You're in denial. And besides, you need a partner for the ball. You'll be grateful for this. Today's Tuesday, don't forget about your date tomorrow!" By this point, we had reached the fork in the road that marked the end of our usual walk-home-together route; mounting his bicycle, he grinned at me, headed towards the right fork. "Laters, dude. Oh, and if you don't mind, could you please scan Fantina's homework and e-mail it to me when you can? Thanks a bunch, man."

Obnoxious and interfering best friends, coupled with obnoxious, interfering study partners. Well I never. Looks like a pattern was starting to emerge in my life. No wonder they got together – if only for a short while. Stupid Red, being too _nice_ for his own good and not being able to stand seeing his friends single. Contrary to popular belief, I quite enjoying flying solo, because it meant I didn't have to cope with the likes of what Ruby went through on a daily basis. Whilst Red had it a lot better with _his _lady friend, I found it rather hard to believe – or appreciate the fact that he was trying to set me up. Still muttering under my breath at his damned _niceness_, I traipsed down the left fork. Ah well. Hate to break it to him, but his so-called plan would never work.

After all, this was revision, and nothing more.

**- - x x x x x - -**

**BACKCHAT**_**!**_**: AMG this chapter is so random. Rather shorter than the last one, I know, but Green isn't as chatty as Blue is, and doesn't really…urrr. Express himself as much. Yeahthat. Expect the next one to be equally as random, but filled with more hyperventilating, looks of disapproval and angry Pachirisu throwing apricorns! Gotta love angry little cutesy Pokémon, amirite?**

**A-ANYWAYS. Yay for Volkner and Flint making impromptu cameos! I found that convo they had in Platinum to be utterly hilarious, about how Flint wanted his Pokémon to appear from his afro. That, and he seems like the sort who would **_**totally**_** blow up Blaine's chem labs for shit and giggles :'D Accidentally-on-purpose. Heh.**

**Oh Green. Famous last words and all. Poor guy has no idea what he's up again, hahahaha. Though in my opinion Red seems to be turning out a bit OOC ;_______; And after reading a bit of the DPPt arc again, I'm once again in love with Pearl and his awesome hilarious…ness. HE'S SO ADORKABLE I SWEAR.**

**Thank you **_**so much**_** to everyone who reviewed, I hope I'm not letting anybody down :C Constructive criticism is always, always appreciated, and I'll strive to make this fic as silly…I mean, as good as you all…um, hope it to be?**

**OH AND ONE MORE THING. Since I'm bad with most ships and whatnot, feel free to recommend some! Which pairings would you like to see? And all that jazz.**

**Until next time!**


	3. step three: learning their habits

**Disclaimer: I do not and never will own Pokémon, or Pokémon Special. -weeps in corner-**

**- - x x x x x - -**

I sat back as far as I could, finally conceding defeat; the big fat textbook on the theory of Pokémon evolution was seriously starting to hurt my knees, and despite the fact that I had been sitting here for the past two hours or so during my so-called 'private study' class with Crystal, I had made about as much progress as a Slowpoke. "This is hopelesssss," I moaned, throwing my head back, only to have it thump uncomfortably against the bark of the tree; before I could even blink, an angry chitter exploded from the topmost branches of a tree, and, had I not speedily jerked forwards, doubtless I would have ended up knocked out cold by a well-aimed apricorn thrown by a grumpy Pachirisu. "Great, now even supposedly cute Pokémon are against me. Right, that just about made my day."

Sprawled out in front of me upon the grass, Crys surveyed me over the rims of her glasses, looking uncannily Professor Oak-like in her disapproval. "You would have made much more progress if you hadn't been ogling the boys doing phys ed," she said pointedly, nodding towards the playing field, to where the male specimens in question were busy strutting their stuff—er, I mean, working out. "Pay attention," she sighed, snapping her fingers in front of my face. "Exams will be upon us soon, and if you don't try a lot harder, Norman would find an excuse to hold you back another year. You don't want that, do you? Also, it'd probably make Green a lot less impressed with you."

"Ugh, of course not. Wait. What would _you_, the Stuffy Academic, know about impressing boys? That's _my_ field. Leave the flirting to a professional like me, and the statistics, probabilities and whatnot to labcoat-wearing smartypants like you." We had known each other for so long that these jibes had become more of a term of endearment, and she was all-too-used to my 'ways of showing I cared'.

"You learn things," she said primly, in a magnificent imitation of Platinum. "Now hit those books, and don't let them – or the likes of a running Green, or, for that matter, unhappy Pachirisu – deter or distract you."

Time seemed to stop. "Green's got P.E. right now?!" I yelped, turning my head so fast my neck cricked; rubbing it gingerly, I peered through the sea of students, attempting to pick out his trademark spiky hair. Crys rolled her eyes, muttering under her breath, '_typical_'.

"I don't see him!" How could I possibly have missed him? That probably spoke volumes about my current mental state, jeesh. "Ohhh! I see him now. Ahhh, why does he have to look so damned _good_ dressed in the P.E. uniform and even after half-drowning himself in the drinking fountain? Envioussss."

Crys sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers. "Blue, if you don't concentrate, your chances of getting him sufficiently interested to ask you to the ball is less than zero. How's this for motivation? Picture him in a tuxedo or suit instead. Makes better eye-candy than a rumpled P.E. uniform, yes? _That's _the reward that awaits you at the end."

**- - x x x x x - -**

He looked me up and down with a less-than-impressed look on his face. "What?"

Well, wasn't he just Mr. Gracious and Charming. "Oh, nothing," I said brightly. "Just thought we should get a rendezvous point or something." Watching as he turned scarlet and almost had an aneurysm on the spot, I relented. "For today's revision, I mean." It was almost comical to see the way he reacted to…I don't know. The implications? No, the _subliminal messages_ I hoped I was conveying. Aww, it was almost cute, if it weren't so hilarious.

It took a while for him to recover his composure. Still rather red in the face, Green refocused his attention to his locker, shoving in a load of books, and crumpling some of them in the process. "Where do you want to meet? For goodness sake, not anywhere noisy, and don't make me waste my precious time looking everywhere to find you."

"Tsk tsk, how rude. Are you like this to all girls? Or just special treatment reserved for me?" Again, I grinned broadly as he glared at me, slamming his locker shut with more force than was strictly necessary. He looked rather antsy, and I wondered what had transpired yesterday after my little ambushing stunt. "Anyways. So, I was wondering. Where should we meet?"

He pulled a face, hoisting up his bag. It looked terribly heavy, and I wondered how many AP courses he was taking. I'd seen – and weighed! – Crystal's textbooks for some of those particular courses, and boy, they weighed _tonnes_. They could be used for paving-stones, really.

"How should I know? You were the one who suggested this. At least have the decency to have your little details figured out. What about, oh, gee, I don't know, the _library_? Isn't that where normal people go to study?"

If I didn't know better, I could have sworn he was alluding to my plan. Nah, can't be. The whole thing's hush-hush, though it needed some fine-tuning. "Ooh, sorry to thwart you, but the library's booked out for the whole of this week for Fantina's sixth-form French students. Don't know about next week, though I heard Lucian say his students would be taking up the place for a literature assignment." I could almost hear the cogs in his brain whirring into indignant overdrive. "What about the cafeteri—"

"No way," Green replied flatly, glowering down at me. Stupid tall boy.

"Ugh, fine, spoilsport." I pouted at him, to be rewarded by an impatient sigh. "What about the field? There are some nice shady trees far away from where the P.E. classes are held, what about that?" Of course, this was all part of my plan. It was a nice, pretty secluded spot, and who knew? Perhaps before long he would be playing into my hands, and all the pieces would fall neatly in place. I assumed he was like most boys in the respect that he did not like showing signs of weakness in front of anyone, and would therefore be less inclined to angry protesting for the sake of saving face. But then and again, if we had company, he'd be subjected to more peer pressure. Ooh, what a dilemma.

Suddenly aware of him waving a hand in front of my face and saying something, I blinked, staring up at him. "What?"

"Aren't there any other less-out-of-the-way places to go for a simple _study session_?"

I crossed my arms. "Well, ex-_cuse_ me for not having a say in the planning of the school! It's either the trees by the playing field, or the cafeteria. Take your pick."

Green scowled. "Fine, whatever. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm late for class."

**- - x x x x x - -**

"I don't want to admit it," Sapph chortled, "but it actually looks like your plan's working. Still, I don't see that great a chance of success, so ya better have my Pokédollars ready. Because ya know what? I hate to break it to you, but it looks like he's just not that into you."

"Party-pooper," I snorted, lobbing a ball of tissue paper at her; she caught it with ease, tossing it into the air as she grinned. "Where's everyone at today, anyways?"

Despite the fact that some people were missing, the cafeteria was as noisy as ever: Gardenia was agonising over a last-minute assignment, with Candice attempting to calm her down by offering to go over her work. Maylene, it seemed, was looking rather put-out, and I suspected it had to do with Wallace gently explaining to her that her handwriting was notoriously difficult to read, leading to her deciding to re-do the entire assignment. Oddly enough, most of the art students were missing, though Sidney and a few other guys – music students, most likely – were engaged in a rowdy round of singing and typical male camaraderie, and Sabrina looked like she was having her ear talked off by Bill. Fancy seeing those two sitting anywhere near one another. Really, the wonders of oblivious teachers, projects and assigned partners, they never ceased to amaze me.

Sapph sipped on her soda, absently scrawling a few words onto Agatha's homework project. "Um. Platina's got her debating competition today, remember? Dia and Pearl went to cheer her on or something. Not that she needs it, she'll do just fine, but ya know them." She set her drink down, grabbing some fries and stuffing them into her mouth, as I _uh-huh'_d and nodded at appropriate intervals. "Crys is still in science, I think. They had a mighty interesting-lookin' experiment there today. Art students went on an excursion, Red and Gold went to the library…an' the swim team's off in an inter-school event or something. Dunno why Brawly's still here, though, I'd have sworn they had a water polo match today, too. Urrr. And, well…I dunno where everyone else is. Though later us athletics and Pokéthlon people will hafta go for trainin' at four. Ish. So everyone should be back by then." Hm, no mention of Ruby. Wonder what he had done _this _time. Perhaps he had tried teaching her Blaziken how to preen its feathers, and pruned her Tropius or something.

Her long speech had evidently exhausted her momentary inspiration; chucking her pen down, she transferred her stare over to one of the other tables, where Brock was arm-wrestling Brawly, surrounded by a gaggle of onlookers. It looked like they were pretty evenly matched.

"Ahhhh. Kinda wish I took art. Then I could skive off the rest of today," I sighed. Sapph smirked.

"Why, can't wait until this afternoon?" she cooed slyly. I snorted.

"Sapphy, honey, don't use that tone. It's…somewhat freaky coming from you."

"Whatever." We subsided back into a comfortable silence, though Sapph's expression remained thoughtful. I chucked another paper napkin ball at her. "Hey! Stop that. Ya know what? I've been thinkin'."

"What, really?" I said jokingly, only to have her accidentally-on-purpose jab me with her pen. "Ow! Jeez, I was kidding!"

"Well, I dunno, but I've been thinking'," she steamrollered on, "about how ya seem to be growing _soft_ in yer old age."

Oh. That. Well, to be honest, I thought so too. Endeavouring to sound offended, I swatted at her; she dodged nimbly. "Old age? How rude." However, my curiosity was piqued; straightening my face, I turned to face her fully. "Why is that?" My tone was casual, though she knew me well enough to know I was fishing for more. She shrugged.

"I dunno," she repeated vaguely, "it's just that you haven't really been…'kay, y'know what? I don't really know how to explain it. But, like, since Grumpypants transferred over, you haven't looked at another guy, not once. That's quite a change, y'know. All through last year, you talked quite a bit about whether you should hook up with such-and-such, if they were going to be interesting, an' all that. But now…" Her voice trailed off. I nodded.

"Yeah, I get."

"Come to think of it, that Victreebel nickname ain't so accurate anymore," Sapph giggled, "I mean, the only ones who ended up so much worse for wear were the…er, especially sensitive ones. Though they tended to mope around quite a bit after you ditched them. An' it wasn't really nice of you to go out with 'em and get their hopes up if ya were gonna dump 'em soon after."

All this talk about my past relationships was making me highly uncomfortable. Gosh, just listening to her talk about the _past me_ was making me feel so _wretched_. To think I used to tut-tut at girls just like that. The players, the man-eaters, the shameless flirts.

In my defence, it was entertaining. However, come to think of it, it was a rather weak defence.

The bell rang, and the cafeteria slowly emptied out; I traipsed towards my next class with a horde of chattering classmates, too lost in thought to know where I was going.

**- - x x x x x - -**

Despite the fact that I had told him to be there at four, Crystal told me it would make a far better impression on him if I turned up early and waiting, than to be late; _she_ for one, was a stickler for punctuality, and everybody knew I had the tendency to rock up _fashionably late_ for everything, as anyone who knew me even vaguely could attest. At three-fifty, and without much further ado, I bid Sapph and Crys farewell – they were on their way off to their cross-country and Pokéthlon training, whilst I had a very important date to keep.

As I made my way across the field, dodging the discuses and shot-puts and whatnot that were being hurled around, I fervently hoped he would turn up. It didn't seem like he had taken too kindly to being pigeonholed like that, but Red had reassured me Green was unlikely to hightail it home. I waved at Sapph as I passed – in the midst of warming up, she gave me a thumbs-up, before resuming her stretching.

However, as soon as I turned back to face the trees, I immediately knew something was wrong. My heart lurched. _Why was he so early?_

Sitting there with arms crossed and head tilted back, staring up at the branches of the tree and looking as though he owned the field, was a certain someone known as Green Oak. What did he have against actually getting somewhere _on time_? Rather unreasonably, I wished that Pachirisu from this morning would reappear to conk him on the head or something.

I strolled towards him, placing my hands on my hips. "Someone's awfully keen on this," I informed him, simultaneously trying to hide a wide grin – and failing abysmally. "Been here long?"

He opened one eye to appraise me. "Not really." He sat up straight, resting his arms on his knees.

"Well, all the more time for us to study! I can't thank you enough for being nice enough to tutor me." I set my bag and books down, batting my eyelashes at him. He looked away and coughed.

"…um. If you don't mind, maybe we can actually get something productive done." Was I imagining things, or was he starting to get flustered? _Perfect_. I scanned his face for any hint of what he might have been thinking, but got nothing. Stupid Mr. Poker Face. Well, that will soon change.

Drat. He was staring at me oddly, and I realised I had missed something _yet again_. "W-what? Sorry, didn't quite catch that. You've got to speak up a bit more, and mumble a bit less."

"Tch. I said, is there any topic you're especially unclear on?" Ugh. Was it possible for him to sound even _more_ bored?

"Ahahaha, well, lots, actually." At this, he let out another cough which sounded suspiciously like '_I'm not surprised_'. I punched him on the shoulder. "That wasn't very nice!"

Poker Face didn't smile. "I said nothing," he deadpanned in response. This was going to be hard. Absurdly so. But it'd be worth it, oh-so-much.

I leaned back against the bark of the tree and kicked off my shoes. It was a nice day today, not quite hot, and not quite cold. Perfect autumn weather. He proceeded to sit back as well, thumbing through a textbook on regional history and Pokémon myths, with the beginnings of a frown creasing his brow.

"Anyways. One of the things I'm a bit unsure about is…this chapter in Evolution Theory."

"Oh? And why is that?" He reached across to extricate his textbook from his bag; when he flipped it open, the margins were crammed with writing and assorted annotations. I peered over his shoulder, scanning his notes. Looks like he was Professor Oak's grandson, through and through.

"I mean, I know when they reach a certain level of strength, their physical appearance also changes to…umm, reflect that new level of experience they have reached? Like, say, if you compare a Togepi and a Togekiss. You can see the difference in maturity and, errr, power…right?" He seemed startled by how close I was, not that I blamed him. Invasion of privacy and personal space. Yet another one of my skills.

He listened without interrupting, and nodded curtly. "Right. So that is evolution by way of level-up, yes. But that's elementary stuff, so what's the real problem?"

Time to cut to the chase. Besides, I _really_ had no idea why this happened, so all the better if I actually learnt something today. "What I'm stuck on is this: why do Pokémon like Magneton and Nosepass evolve only in Mount Coronet? Why does Eevee evolve into Leafeon or Glaceon, based on where they are? Why does location affect how a Pokémon evolves?"

The first hint of a smile I had ever seen appeared on Green's face. If I thought he looked quite the looker before, seeing a smile on his face made his eye-candy worth soar. "Now things get interesting. The Sinnoh region's an interesting place, isn't it? Such a phenomenon has not quite been documented in other regions, I don't think. There isn't really a conclusive answer behind this, though—"

Before he could continue, a sudden shout cut through his explanation; the faint smile vanished, to be replaced by a scowl of exasperation. "What now…?"

A distraction – and complication – came in the form of a rather displeased-looking Silver, who was stomping across to us with a grimace rivalling Green's on his face. Gold followed a close distance behind, looking both amused and at a loss; upon sighting me, he raised a hand in a jaunty wave. "Hiya, pretty lady! What's a-shaking?"

His friendly greeting only caused Silver to shoot him a glare over his shoulder; Gold shrugged, merely trotting along in the wake of his friend. The red-haired boy raised a stiff finger to point at Green, a distinctly suspiciously accusatory expression on his face. "What're _you_ doing with _her_?!"

"What I'm doing?" Green echoed, looking affronted. "What does it look like we're doing?"

Ah, his logic seemed to have felled Silver there. Poor thing, he looked rather puffed out after doing some sprinting, and that, coupled with him marching up here…well, it was only understandable he was feeling out of breath and perhaps somewhat out of the loop.

"Silver," I interrupted, as the two boys frowned at one another, "I appreciate your concern, but Green here—" I waggled a hand at him, "—is helping me revise for the exams. Hey! Wait! Where are you going?" Great. Just great. When it seemed as though things were going along perfectly, problems like this had to arise. I loved Silver to bits, I really did, but it didn't help that he took to glaring at every male who so much as glanced at me with the baleful stare of an enraged Gyarados. Really, he's like the kid brother I never had. Only also playing out the role of the shotgun-toting father, who threatened to do bad things to anyone who came back after curfew.

Green stared down at me. "Well," he smirked, "it looks as though I have overstayed my…er, _welcome_. I'll leave you to sort things out with Silver, and maybe I'll finish explaining that particular issue to you tomorrow, if there's any time between classes."

Silver looked triumphant, yet slightly guilty. I supposed this was a bit of a conflict of interest for him, since he apparently looked up to Green, yet at the same time wanted to look _out_ for me. Boy, this was going to be a pain to sort out.

Gold, who had been unusually silent so far, scratched his chin in a thoughtful manner, gazing into the distance. "Aww, poor Whitney. Looks like she took a bit of a tumble in the hurdles." Momentarily distracted, we all turned towards the field, where the athletics people were busy training. One of the hurdles had fallen over, and Whitney was being helped to her feet by Surge, who was inspecting her ankle. "A-ah! Jeez, I forgot, I'm up next." He turned to wallop Silver on the back. "Moron, why did you drag me over? Now I have to run back!"

Forgetting about why he was here, Silver shoved the other boy. "Idiot! _You _followed me over. And if I were you, I'd be hurrying back now so as not to miss my relay, instead of wasting time yapping about it!"

"You're the idiot. Come here and I'll slap you silly."

"Oh? Is that a threat? Come closer and I'll rearrange your face for you."

"Yeah? Bring it on," Gold sneered. "I'm shaking in my cross-country trainers!"

"What's all this posturing and huffing for, anyways?"

Green rolled his eyes, and shouldered his bag, ready to leave. Ugh, this was such a pain. "Hey, he didn't mean it! And I still need to know why—" Okay, this was hopeless. I needed to resort to drastic measures.

Silver's tirade continued in the background. "It's not like _she's_ here to watch you. Not that an intellectual like that will be impressed by the likes of you, overinflated with ego as you are and full of nothing but hot air, just like a Drifblim, only worse—urkk."

I lunged forwards to grab hold of Green's wrist before he could escape; for a moment, Gold and Silver were too wrapped up in their arguing to notice Green turning scarlet – he was just like a traffic light, with the speed at which he changed colours, ha ha ha. I tugged pleadingly at the cuff of his sleeve, staring up at him. "C'mon, you still need to teach me stuff," I wheedled, pulling a bit harder.

"Maybe she happens to like Drifblims," Gold retorted huffily, "and has caught several already, so taken up by their charms is she." Silver stared at me, agog, quite unable to process what he was seeing, no doubt. Catching sight of us, the other boy tapped his nose with a knowing air and, grabbing hold of his friend, waved at me. "Catch you later, Blue, we won't interrupt your revision anymore. _Right_?" he added as he began to shepherd Silver back towards the training field, just as Surge's shrill whistle cut through the air.

An awkward silence rushed in to fill the space left behind by Gold and Silver. Sneaking a glance at Green, I decided I had enough of teasing him for today; we would gradually build up to the rest, and right now, it seemed best to let him recover from his little shock. I released his hand, and he dropped his bag, flopping down beside me. For several moments, he didn't speak.

"…_please_ don't do that again."

I smiled innocently at him, leaning in uncomfortably close. "Now, what were you saying about location-based evolution?"

**- - x x x x x - -**

The rest of the study session had passed with little event, which was a shame. However, glory of glories, I actually managed to learn something, and the fruits of my labour were currently sitting in the middle of my file: page upon page of notes, all full of actual meaningful content.

Boy, was I proud of myself. I was more productive during these two hours than I was for a whole day! Of course, it sort of helped that I had a hidden agenda concerning my _tutor_. After Gold and Silver's departure, and after he had some time to compose himself and recover from the shock of my little impromptu attention-grabbing stunt, Green had proven himself to be surprisingly…gee, I don't know. Conversational, even, though he still remained somewhat tetchy when I stopped paying attention, or started asking silly questions.

It was already getting dark outside as I let myself into the house; dad was still at work, and I as proceeded to rummage through the fruit bowl for something to munch on, mom poked her head out of the pantry. "How was school, honey?" I shrugged.

"The usual. Though half the year was missing today because of some arts thing."

"What about your little tuition session?" mom asked distractedly, now opening the fridge to haphazardly chuck things onto the kitchen bench.

I grinned at the memory. "It went really well, actually. I absorbed more in the space of a few hours than I did during the whole week." Helping myself to an appl, I picked up my bag from where I had unceremoniously deposited it by the dining table. "Be down soon."

"Dinner in half an hour, okay?"

"Right."

I made my way upstairs, flinging open my room door and dumping my bag on my bed, before proceeding to flop down beside the jumble of books which spilled onto my quilt. An unfamiliar textbook caught my eye, and, sitting up, I yanked it from my bag. This wasn't mine. Since when did I take AP chemistry? The only thing I knew about gold was that it came in nuggets, was obnoxiously rare, and cost a bomb. And that a certain friend of mine fancied a certain boy who went by the same name, though she would never admit it to me in a billion years. Flipping the covers open, I scanned for a name, though I was pretty sure I knew whose this was.

Why on earth did I have Green's textbook with me? And what kind of working habits did he have? Curious, I thumbed through the pages, though it didn't take long for me to be bored to tears with the complex strings of equations which were scattered throughout the pages, accompanied by even more notes in his surprisingly legible handwriting. So much for my theory that all boys had messy writing.

I suppose I could always return this to him tomorrow…and somehow find a way to incorporate it with my plan in such a way that I could get one step closer to my goal. Hmm. What could a textbook do to lure someone over? Now I really regretted not taking down his Pokégear number or something. At least if I called him…

The sudden ring of the doorbell surprised me; I checked the clock. It couldn't be dad, because it was still a bit early for him. Besides, he had his own set of keys, anyways. Just who was this rather late visitor? I sat on my bed for a while, staring into space, running my thumb against the unfamiliar textbook; my little reverie was interrupted by mom suddenly summoning me downstairs, which made me even more confused. _This_ definitely wasn't part of our usual daily rhythm.

Traipsing downstairs, I made my way towards the front door, just in time to catch my mother saying something to the mystery visitor; hearing my less-than-quiet approach, she turned to me and raised her eyebrows. "Blue! You didn't tell me you had a friend coming over."

Friend? Peering over her shoulder, I found myself nearly face-to-face with the last person I expected to be here in the immediate future: Green. "What're _you_ doing here?" I demanded, sounding horribly ungracious. Clearing my throat, I waved mom away; she gave me a last, questioning look, before taking the hint and leaving the two of us alone.

I smiled quizzically at him. "I didn't know you missed my company so much. Was I a good student?" I added, despite myself.

He rubbed the back of his neck, looking tired and crabby. "I came to return this," he responded bluntly, holding out my biology textbook. "How and why it even came into my possession, I don't know. I just thought I'd return it before tomorrow. I assumed you might have needed it for something or another." He waited until I took my book back from him, before turning to leave.

"Hey, hold your horses. How did you even find my address?"

Mr. Poker Face looked rather amused at this. "Why?" he said sardonically, green eyes glinting in the evening gloom. "I'm not some lovestruck stalker, if that's what you're thinking. Sorry to disappoint. After you left, I found _your_ book in _my_ bag. I just asked Red where I could find you."

Ah, Red. Figures. If my sources were correct, the two of them walked home together every day. Well, sort of. "Aww, that's awfully sweet of you. Thanks a bunch."

"No problem." Again, he spun abruptly, and I wondered why he was so keen to hightail it out of here. Also…_his_ book. Hmm. I had an idea brewing.

"…say, I just remembered something."

He stopped short, glancing over his shoulder at me. "What's that? Got another weird question for me to try to answer?"

"Oh, goodness, no. Just now, I found your chem book in my bag. I suppose you want it back," I grinned slyly at him. He raised an eyebrow.

"That would be quite nice, actually." Despite his perfectly still face, I sensed more than just a teensy hint of sarcasm in his voice. No, actually, that was an understatement.

"All right, then. Hold up while I go get it. No, actually, it's getting a bit chilly out. Would you like to come in?"

"No. I'm fine out here."

Ugh. Stupid Grumpy Boy and wanting to make my life even more difficult. If he didn't budge, so help me, I was somehow going to drag him in, whether he liked it or not.

"Ah, just come in. If my dad comes home and sees you loitering out here, he'll be asking questions." I wondered if I should repeat this afternoon's cajoling-wrist-tug. Probably not. He might have a heart attack on the spot. Not that there was anything I could cling on to, though: it seemed as though he was determined not to repeat what happened earlier, and now had both hands shoved resolutely into his pockets.

"Loitering," Green repeated with an air of disbelief. Finally, he relented, and nodded. "Fine."

Well, it was high time he gave in with some degree of grace. "Excellent." I stepped aside to let him in, before shutting the door. I flounced upstairs in high spirits, pleased at how well my little coup was going. He followed rather uncertainly, looking distinctly ill-at-ease.

When we reached my room, I made a great display of digging his book out of my bag; handing it to him with a flourish, I surveyed his face for any hint of an expression. If anything, he looked vaguely surprised, and a little annoyed. "How did you get this? No, wait. I amend that question. How did we even end up switching books? They don't even look that much alike."

Boy, this was tempting. Ah, what the heck. Might as well. Just to gauge his reaction. "Fate," I deadpanned, watching closely as he frowned suspiciously at me.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Gosh, can't even take a joke. "I was kidding," I sighed. "Honestly, though, I don't know. I found it when I came back, and if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that I sure as heck don't do AP chemistry. Looks like very invigorating reading, by the way."

"Indeed. Well, uh. Thanks."

"Oh, no, thank _you_ for returning mine to me. If you hadn't come over, I would never have had any idea you had my book. And I have a bio test soon, so it'd have been awful if I didn't have anything to revise from."

"Yes, well. I'll…see you tomorrow. Don't forget the Lorelei's design tech portfolios, like you did the last time."

"You underestimate me," I laughed, and he merely raised his eyebrows in a challenging manner.

"We'll see."

Oh, Green. This was well and truly game on.

**- - x x x x x - -**

**BACKCHAT**_**!**_**: Okay, I lied. There wasn't quite any hyperventilating, but there **_**were**_** the other two! BUT STILL. For once we had quite a bit of interaction between the two, **_**at long last**_**. Watch the sparks fly. Oh ho ho ho.**

**Mmkay, well, I'm aware of the fact that I didn't end very well, but then and again, I really suck at ending things. Fo' srs. **

**Once again, great love to all you wonderful readers who have the patience to continue with this seemingly neverending fic, and a huge and heartfelt thanks to those of you who spared the time to give me reviews; I enjoy reading what you guys have to say, and can't thank you enough for all the useful pointers and hints to help me improve.**

**So, on the most part, I suppose I've got some pairings figured out, for the Dex holders, and a few of the gym leaders and whatnot. Though it's really on the latter that I'm stuck on, ahahaha. Once again, if you like to see your favourite gym leader, Elite Four member or Champion paired up with someone, feel free to drop me a line x) Psst. I think even if Flint isn't a student anymore, he'll still gatecrash for the heck of it. And maybe accidentally-on-purpose set fire to the venue. Again. I'm a bit surprised they haven't banned him from the school premises yet, actually 8')**

**The upcoming chapters might take a bit longer than the past few, mainly because exams are right around the corner, and like the master procrastinator that I am, I really ought to be starting to study :'D Keep your eyes peeled for updates, though, because knowing me, I'll be attempting to finish this first. REVISION IS FOR WUSSIES.**

**I jest.**

**Until next time!**


	4. step four: preparing for the worst

**Disclaimer: I do not and never will own Pokémon, or Pokémon Special. If I did, OldRivalShipping would be so canon it couldn't possibly be even more canon. The end.**

**- - x x x x x - -**

"So…this bit on the history of the Hoenn region…"

Once again, I wondered what I had possibly done to deserve this. Just why had I deigned to tutor her? It wasn't as though I actually _enjoyed_ having to explain things to people. The fact that she was infuriatingly prone to repeating what I had attempted to drill into her head just moments before made matters even worse. Hearing my own answers parroted back at you was one of the most annoying things I had ever experienced, and, sadly, it was becoming much of a trend in my life, much like how I came to find myself surrounded by an increasingly worrying degree of obnoxiousness.

After yet another ridiculous and nonsensical question, I decided I had had enough. "Blue, for goodness sake," I snapped with no small degree of utmost exasperation, "if you don't wrap your head around this concept by the next few weeks, _you're going to fail the exams_, and all this would have been a waste of time and effort. Do you honestly want that?"

In response to that, she pouted at me, affixing a pleading look upon her face. "Don't say that, that's just mean!" the girl gasped in a combination of mock hurt and indignation, looking scandalised. "Why're you always so ungracious?"

I refrained from rolling my eyes with great difficulty. "I'm not ungracious if I'm still teaching you," I informed her; seeing as eyes widen with pretended outrage, I hastily cut in before she could launch into yet another tirade on how damned _mean and ungraciously horrible _I was. "I can't say you're a bad student," I growled under my breath, "but would it kill you to be able to remember important dates and discoveries, as opposed to _trivial tidbits of information I did not ask for_?"

Lamentably, after being forced to give her my Pokégear number as well as e-mail address, she had come to contact me with increasingly unnerving regularity, for the most trivial and mind-numbingly mundane of matters. I had foolishly, perhaps, presumed at first it was because she was sincerely concerned with her grades, and was actually keen on _not_ flunking the year and scraping through with a mediocre pass. Not that I had much knowledge of what her grades were like, but if her performance in these tutoring sessions were anything to go by, she still had a long way to go. Sometimes, I wondered. I really did. Such obfuscating, deliberate silliness just had to be an act. There was absolutely no way anybody could be as ridiculously inane.

"Trivial? Since when were people's social lives trivial? People's hearts are fragile things, and they need to be handled with care! I'm sure you would agree if you've ever had your feelings trampled on before! Which I don't doubt, mind you, because despite the fact that I'm sure you're quite the ladies' man, you're only human, and all people will experience that at some point in their—"

I ground my teeth, once again refraining from slapping myself out of sheer force of will. "They have absolutely no importance with your academics! And if I recall correctly, the only reason we're still here is because you're convinced you need help with passing some classes. Isn't that right?" _Ladies' man? _Where in the world had she gotten that from? I wisely decided to ignore that second bit. The very notion, it was just preposterous.

She frowned at me. "Well, yes, but—"

"But nothing. Right, well, you know what? Desperate times call for desperate measures." I set the book down to appraise her; she tilted her head to the side, looking genuinely curious.

"What do you mean?" Really, if I didn't know better, I could have sworn she had the oddest and most unfitting of grins on her face; however, when I blinked, the strangely victorious smile was gone, and I began to wonder if I was imagining things. Late-night revision sessions, conducted via text messaging – I also regretted the fact that she had somehow found my actual phone number, since this effectively meant I had no peace whatsoever now – had become commonplace, and, with the exams just around the corner, I honestly had no idea how she was going to be able to pass the year. Just last night, at about three in the morning, I had been rudely awoken by a text from none other than this most peculiarly obnoxious girl in front of me, bearing the most cryptic of messages.

"_I hope you're ready. For everything. (: xx Blue."_

What on earth could that possibly mean? It made me want to tear my hair out with frustration. I refocused my attention upon her, still rather unnerved by her smug smile. "As if you don't know."

"Oooh, I'm inflamed by curiosity now. What desperate measures will you be resorting to, pray tell? No need to be coy about it, such an act will never work on me," she added with a knowing smirk. I felt my eye twitch. "I would know, of all people. Won't you agree?"

"Whatever it is you're doing, stop it. You're the most annoying and bothersome person I've ever had the misfortune to meet." I ran a hand through my hair, wondering if I really ought to say what was on my mind. It seemed like the only thing that could goad her into productivity, seeing as how that damned dance was the only thing she ever talked about, apart from who was going with whom, and who was planning on wearing what. "…I'll…"

"You'll what?" she taunted gleefully, pleased that she had managed to get under my skin to such a degree. I, for one, couldn't believe she could do it so easily, and stayed silent. "Come on, say it, you have me on tenterhooks."

"Oh, shut up," I fumed.

"Green, honey, has anyone ever told you you're absolutely adorable when you're angry?" She giggled with utmost amusement as I stopped mid-rant, to stare at her, completely and utterly aghast.

"A-adorable?" I echoed faintly, not believing I had even heard my name and that…that _word_ in the same sentence. "Would you…care to repeat that?"

"I wouldn't mind, actually. Here, once again, for your ears only: you sound utterly delectable when you're furious."

"…gack." Whilst I prided myself on my – on the most part – inestimable calm and composure, this was something I had never, ever had to hear before. "Are you flirting with me?" I demanded, though I immediately regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth; I could not believe I, of all people, said that. This was horrendous. What was the obnoxious woman doing to me?

"Hmm…well, if you look at it that way…" She suddenly closed the gap between us, and we were now face-to-face, her eyes boring into mine. Being subject to her scrutiny was a highly discomfiting experience, to say the least.

"Annoying woman. Don't you dare play around with me. I'm not one of your toys."

"Of course you're not. You're much more than that, uhohoho…"

"Cheh. Now you really leave me with no choice. But then and again, seeing as how something like that will probably never happen, I'm perfectly sure I have nothing to fear."

"Oh? Now I'm really intrigued," she purred, drawing up even closer against me. "Tell me more."

Good grief. How had we gone from discussing Hoenn's history to…to _this_? It just beggared belief. I attempted to backpedal slightly, to claw back some of the personal space I had lost. In response, she merely leaned in closer, still wearing that insouciant, self-satisfied smile. If I bent any further backwards, I would be doing yoga. In the middle of the playing field. Surrounded by books.

"I have a preposition to make."

"Well, then, cut to the chase. You really know how to play hard-to-get, don't you?" I swear, the more time I spent with her, the more audacious she got. It was almost as though instead of researching subject matter that came up in projects and assignments, she spent her time looking up methods to irritate me even further, and sad to say, it worked extremely well. I preferred it when she hadn't bothered me much during those honeymoon weeks just after my transfer, though now, such peace was but a wistful dream for me.

"Okay, no, really, hear me out. In the highly unlikely event that you manage to actually _pass _the exam—"

"Oh ho ho, is this a direct challenge?" We were now practically nose-to-nose, so disturbingly close as we were; I felt my shoulders beginning to ache from attempting to support me in such an uncomfortable position; the fact that she was still smiling didn't help in the slightest.

"Keep quiet and let me continue, you loud, pesky woman. As I was saying, in the unlikely event that you not only manage to pass the exam, but also be one of the top students for each subject, I'll…ugh. Let's just say this: hard work reaps its own rewards."

"Oooh, like what? Though, hmm, your criteria sound impossibly hard to fulfil. You're a really tough taskmaster, do you know that? But I like it that way. It makes the reward all the _sweeter_." My elbows decided to give way right then, and I found myself plummeting ungraciously to earth, landing on the soft grass with a gentle _thump_.

"Ngh." I attempted to scramble back upright, only to be forced back down as she grinned, leaning dangerously low over me; I fought back an indignant cough with difficulty. For a few moments, I stared up at her, feeling slightly bemused; this was the first time I ever had to look up to _Blue_, of all people, and it was, to be honest, an extremely odd perspective.

Due to the fact that her hands were planted on the ground either side of me, there was no way I could have rolled or wriggled away from her scrutiny. Blast it. To make things worse, I needed to sneeze; her long hair was tickling my nose. In some vague, detached part of my mind, I wondered what this scene looked like to an outsider, a casual onlooker; just attempting to conjure up such an awkward mental image was more than sufficient for me to stop.

"What do you think you're doing? Get off!"

Blue ignored me. "So, what do I get if I manage to fulfil all of the aforementioned criteria?" she breathed, eyes narrowing slightly. "Remember that conversation we had a few weeks ago in front of my house? About not underestimating me?"

I stopped and glared at her. "Yeah. I do. What about it?"

"Do you honestly believe I can't achieve that?" Her tone was serious now, though that sly, secretive smirk was still playing across her lips.

"You haven't done a very good job of proving yourself. Therefore, I have every right to be sceptical."

"Well, then, we'll see, won't we? So, what's this little preposition you have to make? Will it be worth my while? Hohohoho…knowing you, it probably will be."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I demanded, though predictably enough, she gave me no answer. By this point, I was well and truly sick of lying here and having my psychological buttons pushed. If she didn't let me up in the immediate future, I would have to resort to her technique…though the prospect of doing that didn't appeal to me in the slightest.

She shrugged, still looking annoyingly smug. "_You_ tell me."

"If this serves as any motivation for you, I'll…I'll…" Damn. I couldn't say this. It was like admitting defeat to peer pressure and all that. It was embarrassing to even _think_ about what I had in mind. How could I even be considering this? It only went to show how annoying she was.

"You'll stutter at me?" she chortled, biting back a hysterical burst of laughter; pulling away from our highly uncomfortable physical proximity, she sat back _on my damned knees_, dissolving into a fit of giggles. "Oh, wow, that's really frightening."

I scowled at her, attempting to lever myself up to a more comfortable half-sitting position, though my efforts were thwarted _only somewhat _by the fact that she was still sitting on my legs. "Oi. Get off."

She finally deigned to let me go, still wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. "I can't believe this."

I watched as she flopped down and rolled over in the grass, chuckling in that infuriating manner of hers. "This is just _rich_. The great Green Oak, stammering like a shy, lovestruck boy. It's sweet, and I haven't seen it directed towards me for a while…or _from you_, for that matter. Well, you know what they say. There's a first for everything."

"I am _not_ a shy, lovestruck boy," I positively hissed in response, clenching my fists. She rolled over again to affix me with an upside-down look of utmost amusement.

"Sure you aren't."

Time to bite the bullet. I had to remind myself the chances of this happening were slim, so I might as well take the risk. "I'll take you to that accursed…_dance_ if you pass the exams and be one of the top students for your subjects. No, wait. Not just one of the top students. In the top five. How's that for incentive?"

Well, _that_ sure wiped the smile from her face. For several moments, I finally got what I was craving so badly – peace and quiet. A welcome silence rushed in to fill the gap left by her absurdly distracting giggling, as she stared up at me with utmost shock. Here and now, she looked almost _fetching_, with her long, auburn locks standing out in stark contrast against the bright green of the grass upon which she lay. A slow smile spread across her face, blue eyes aglow with the glint of disbelief. May thunder strike me down for saying so, but…she looked almost…appealing from this angle, especially given that she had been momentarily stunned into silence. It was almost worth the sacrifice.

"You're kidding."

I frowned at her. "Do you think I'd _joke_ about something like this? And even _voluntarily _attend that blasted function? Remember, I do everything for a reason. _Everything_."

A slight frown creased her brow. "No…you're right. Oh my goodness, you're right."

I watched as she sat up, tossing her head and sending strands of cinnamon-brown flying from her face; running her hands through her hair, she grinned impishly across at me. "My, my. I'm very flattered. You're taking this very seriously, aren't you?"

"What do you think?" I replied through gritted teeth, "I'm doing this for fun?"

"Well, I don't know. _You _tell me. I know _I_ am."

"What was that?"

"Nothing, nothing. Just thinking out loud."

I shot her a sidelong glance. "Something tells me you're deliberately withholding information from me," I informed her as bluntly as I could; she merely waggled a finger at me, a slight smirk on her lips.

"Oh? And whyever so?"

"You know why."

"Ooh…um…" She batted her eyelashes innocently at me. "Gee, this is awfully hard. I'm sure _you_ have the answer, though."

"No, I don't, actually. Care to enlighten me?"

"Ah, well, all will be revealed in due course, Green."

"Tch."

Leaning back against the tree, she surveyed me with the air of a fascinated child appraising a Pokémon it had never seen before; it went without saying I did not quite enjoy this kind of treatment. "What _now_?"

"We-ell," she began, thoughtfully tapping her chin with a long-nailed finger, "I was thinking. You seemed awfully _averse _to the very prospect of attending the ball—"

"For perfectly good reason," I finished for her. "Case closed. End of story. Next question."

"—but now that you've made me this preposition, I want to be sure you'll not break your promise."

"Promise? I made no promise. It was an offer. And it's only a promise if _you_ uphold _your_ side of the bargain."

"Ah, yes, the little issue of my grades."

"Right you are. Keep going." It felt distinctly harsh to be so sardonic and sarcastic towards her, though it was quite difficult _not _to be, in the face of such idiosyncratic musings.

"Well, all right. So, I'll keep my side of the bargain, if you keep yours. Sounds fair?"

"…yes." I wondered where this was heading towards.

"Good! We'll seal the deal." She clapped her hands together with glee, a distinctly businesslike tone in her voice; discomfited, I gaped at her.

"With _what_?" What was this business of sealing deals? Couldn't she just take my word for it? I hated the prospect of attending a function like _that_, where I was going to be made to dress up in a suit and dance with some girl and pretend to enjoy ghastly canapés. However, that didn't mean I would do anything in my power to back out of it if I had already had an agreement with someone.

"A kiss." It seemed as though she were holding her face straight with great difficulty, and I resisted the urge to grab her by the shoulders and give her a firm shake.

"_What_? What did you say? Are. You. _Serious_?"

She pouted at me in what she evidently thought was a charming and winsome manner; I felt some of my irritation momentarily fade away, only to flare back at her words. "Of course. Haven't you heard of the phrase? _Sealed with a kiss_?"

"No!" I glared at her. "And why would I kiss a total stranger? I'm not another one of your lovestruck little stalkers, thanks."

The girl gasped at that, looking genuinely injured. "A total stranger? We've known each other since you transferred here! And you've been tutoring me for the past month! I wouldn't call us total strangers!"

"That's beside the point."

"Well, at any rate, I want to be sure you won't bail out on me. Imagine, if I managed to ace the exams and top the year, all for nothing! How awful." Blue shuddered a bit at that, and I felt my brows knit with exasperation.

"It's not for nothing. You would be well-equipped for university, and what's more, stand a chance at graduating high school!"

"But I need motivation!"

It was like arguing with a child.

"You're impossible."

"Come on, now's the perfect time. The athletics people are too far away to see what we're doing, and if you want, you can put a book in front of our faces or something, and make it look like you're explaining some obscure little detail in the text to me! I mean, if I keep reminding you about our deal, you'll get even more _annoyed_, am I right?"

I gaped at her. "You had this all figured out, didn't you? Not only are you obnoxious, irritating and annoying, but you're a regular minx as well. Whatever next?"

"Ohohoho…you flatter me. Now, chop-chop! I suppose I can cut you some slack for now, though. It doesn't have to be on the lips."

_For now_? What could she possibly mean by that? And why was _I _the one doing the kissing, when _she_ was the one who insisted on it?

"Ngh." With great reluctance, I selected the biggest, thickest textbook I owned – on history, predictably enough – and held it in front of my face. "Come closer," I hissed at her through clenched teeth. "I don't have a Girafarig's neck."

Once again, she drew closer to me, eyes glinting with mischief. "Anywhere you like," she cooed, and I scowled at her; she merely laughed at my expression. I watched as she closed her eyes, lips curving upwards in a smile filled with devious anticipation.

This was still humiliating, even if it wasn't on the lips. Why was I allowing myself to be prodded and poked by this girl, of all people? However, I already knew the answer: I would get no peace unless I kissed her and _sealed the deal_, so to speak.

Ensuring that our features were completely and utterly obscured by the tremendous tome, I leaned forwards, gingerly planting a kiss on her cheek. Her skin was smooth and warm to the touch, and as I pulled away, I felt a wide grin spread itself across her face. "That wasn't so hard now, was it?"

"Shut up," I warned her. "There's only so far you can push me in one day, and you've just reached that limit." Retreating to a more comfortable distance, I stuffed the book into my bag, determined not to look at her. "I'm telling you now, this will never happen again. Repeat this to anyone, and you can consider our deal null and void."

She grinned at me. "My lips are sealed."

"They had better be."

**- - x x x x x - -**

"What do you mean, dance lessons? Aren't we supposed to have more important things to worry about? Like revision? Seeing as how the exams are less than two months away?" I snarled, grabbing a protesting Red by the collar and shaking him. "Don't fool around—"

A group of juniors passing by stopped to give us curious stares, only ambling on when I glared at them. Wait until they get to this year, and have to cope with the likes of, well, obnoxious women.

"Hey, d'you think I'd joke about something like this?" he objected, attempting to extricate his shirt from my grip. "Besides, I find it every bit as awkward as you do. Or will. Whatever floats your boat."

"_Nobody_ finds it as awkward as I do—"

"Also, the ball's one week after the exams, and it won't do to have bad dancers like me out loose and stepping on feet left, right and centre, yeah? And this is meant to be a bit of a reprieve from all that cram-studying we've been doing. A chance to have a little bit of fun before all the pressure, so to speak."

"—I don't even _like_ dancing. I'm not even _going_ to the stupid function."

For a moment, Red stopped trying to prise his shirt-collar from my fingers. "Really? But…urrr…somebody told me otherwise."

"Oh yeah? Who was tha—no. _She_ told you, didn't she? Noisy woman."

"What? No! Not the _she_ you're talking or thinking about! I mean, ah, um…y'know…Yellow." He looked rather sheepish as he said her name, absently raising a hand to run his fingers through his dark hair.

It was my turn to be surprised. "And how does she know?" I demanded, allowing my grip to slacken; Red straightened his jacket, taking his time to speak.

"Ah, well, you know girls. They talk to each other. Tell one another things."

"You don't say."

"Speaking of which. I also heard there's no way you can bail out of this. Some kind of pact you made?"

How did he even know so much? It _had_ to be Blue. Stupid girl and telling her exes everything. "Not exactly. Once again, I'd like to ask: how do you know all this? And did you find out how exactly I was coerced into agreement?"

"Naw. Yellow only mentioned you were going, and you had made some sort of agreement with Blue. That's all we know. Hey, don't pull faces like that. I'm sure she'll be great fun to go with. Heck, going out with her was more like being, I don't know, just…friends. Or something like that."

"I see."

"But still! Dance lessons. Why do we even need them? It's not like we'll be doing all that much waltzing, anyways…right?"

"I wish. Don't you remember last time? I was up for almost the whole four hours because she kept wanting to dance!"

"Oh yeah, I do, actually…hey, but it was an experience, right?"

I could only snort disbelievingly in response.

**- - x x x x x - -**

"Ah, c'est fantastique, everyone is here today!" She strode into the gymnasium, looking as though she owned the place; immaculately dressed and coiffed as always, Fantina stopped to beam at us. Upon sighting my less-than-impressed look, she tutted disparagingly, waggling a finger at me. "You there, why looking so glum? This is a wonderful opportunity to hone your skills at the art of dancing!"

"Yeah, Green, why so serious?" Blue murmured, appearing seemingly from nowhere to slip her hand through my resolutely crossed arms; she took advantage of my momentary surprise to loosen my arms, grabbing hold of my hand. "I hope you're a good dancer, I won't quite fancy having my toes trampled on for five hours…"

I attempted to ignore her, as well as the multitude of curious stares we were receiving. The last thing I needed was to have some…some _nonexistent _relationship being hinted at, and being relegated as a laughingstock by the entire school. "What do you think you're doing?" I hissed at her from between clenched teeth. She gave me a coy, one-sided smile.

"_Nothing_," she smirked, entwining her slender fingers with mine; all-too-aware of the raised eyebrows directed our way, I gave up on attempting to prise my hand free, and settled for pondering upon the curious sensation of her hand in mine. It was not altogether unpleasant, though admitting as such would be like conceding defeat. The rest of Fantina's speech faded away into the background as I glanced around me, wondering who had been unfortunate – or silly – enough to allow themselves to be press-ganged into such a tribulation. To my left, Ruby was looking absolutely at ease, eyes obscured by the glinting lenses of his newest pair of glasses – Sapphire had apparently accidentally squashed the last pair during one fine study lesson – whilst the girl in question looked distinctly uneasy, no doubt regretting her decision to attend this practise session. Silver was staring at Fantina with eyebrows raised impossibly high, an air of scepticism hanging around him, whilst Gold, it seemed, had been distracted by the females in this group of students and was surreptitiously trying to catch their eyes. Red, on the other hand, looked rather sheepish, and not altogether sure as to what he was doing here, and Yellow seemed, if anything, every bit as lost.

To my right, Maylene was peering through her fingers at the drama teacher as though she had never seen her before, though Candice and Whitney were all smiles, no doubt already picking out potential dance partners from the various other unamused or abashed-looking males in their immediate vicinity. Roark, on the other hand, appeared every bit as dubious as Bugsy and Aaron did; evidently, they did not regard dancing with as much importance as some certain people did. Good for them. As for the sixth-formers, they were conspicuously absent, no doubt because they had been through this already last year, and presumably had no need – or desire – to touch up on their dancing moves.

Why did it have to be compulsory for my year, I don't even want to know.

I was snapped out of my musings by a tug at my sleeve. I blinked, to glance sidelong at Blue. "What now?"

"They're starting the lesson," she declared gleefully, tossing her chestnut locks over her shoulder. I grunted in response, slowly and resignedly unfolding my arms, and allowing myself to be led towards an empty space between Janine and Falkner, and Roark and Gardenia. Over the top Yellow's head, Red shrugged at me: _best get this over with, huh?_

"Now, eyes to the front, and watching Juan!" Fantina clapped her hands together for attention, before moving into position to demonstrate; the university lecturer bowed at her, before holding her right hand in his.

"Take hold of your partner's hand, like so," he began; I heard a chorus of giggling break out, and uncomfortable foot-shufflings. No prizes for guessing who the culprits were. Juan ignored them, continuing as though he had not been interrupted. "Do not grab on too tightly, or you'll risk breaking their fingers. Don't be too limp and lifeless, either. Ladies, place your other hand on your partner's right shoulder, and gentlemen, yours goes on your partner's waist."

Blue grinned devilishly at me. "Isn't this fun?" she whispered, the light of mischief dancing in her eyes; I snorted. "Hardly." Our shared physical proximity brought back to mind last Friday, and that incident I was not keen on remembering. She idly drummed her fingers against my shoulder as we waited for the music to play.

"Could you stop that?"

The annoying woman giggled and sighed at my expression. "Oh, all right." However, that didn't stop her hands from wandering: seconds later, she tutted under her breath, before proceeding to reach up and tug at my hair. "Does it ever lie flat?"

"Ow! Hey, leave me alone. No, seriously, stop," I growled, attempting to slap her hands away; she sighed again, lapsing back into silence, though her eyes continued to flicker back and forth, as she watched the others tackle the milestone of actually facing one another and gingerly holding hands in what they thought was the right 'waltz pose'.

The first strains of music began to play through the gymnasium, and, taking up position once more, Fantina and Juan began their demonstration. From here, it looked deceptively simple, though I had long since learned from painful experience that ballroom-dancing was a lot harder than it looked, and more often than not, resulted in squashed toes.

"If you are the leader, then your partner will have to follow your actions in _opposite_; now, on a count of…_un, deux, trois_!" Juan stepped forwards, easing effortlessly into a waltz; Fantina's extensive skirts swished as they circled slowly, coming to a stop after a few beats. The purple-haired teacher smiled broadly at us. "Now, it is your turn to try!"

Great. Just great. As they switched the music to one with a slower, easier-to-follow beat, I glanced down at our feet, thankful to note that Blue wasn't wearing anything remotely dangerous: just a pair of sneakers, which, at the worst, would succeed in flattening my tarsals: nothing major.

"On the first beat, the boy steps forward with his left foot; then, step forward and to the right with your right foot, tracing an upside-down L on the floor as you do this." Fantina prowled through the ranks of awkwardly-shuffling students, pausing here and there to correct postures. "Slide your left foot over to the right, and stand with your feet together. Oh, and _do _try to keep from falling over as you do that. _Enchantee!_ Now, step back with your right foot…no, no, no, Aaron, your right foot, that one, that one!"

It was amazing how much of this I still remembered, even after two years; whilst everyone else had their eyes firmly fixed to the floor and misstepping left, right and centre, I found it surprisingly easy to lead Blue into the dance; tearing her eyes away from carefully following my steps, she glanced up at me, looking rather surprised. "You never told me you could dance! I always thought you didn't want to attend because, I don't know, you had two left feet." She giggled a little at that, and I rolled my eyes.

"I don't like it because it's an exercise in patience," I informed her in my most matter-of-fact tone. "There's no reason why we have to attend the ball, other than the fact that it serves as distraction from more important things."

"Hmph," she pouted, allowing me to twirl her in a lazy circle, "I'm sure we'd make a _great_ pair on the dance floor."

"That's provided you even pass the exams." By this point, I became acutely aware of the fact that everyone else had stopped dancing, and we were the only two still at it. Feeling a dull flush creeping up towards my face, I released my partner's hands, coming to an abrupt standstill and determined not to look at anyone.

It went without saying Gold looked gobsmacked, whilst Silver was now glaring daggers at me; I returned his look with one of pointed indifference, and in the background, Red was grinning like the loon he was.

Fantina looked every bit as gleeful as Blue did. "See? This wasn't too bad! You've let your inner dancer free, and now you can truly enjoy yourself…"

I wished, more than anything at the moment, that the gymnasium floor would just open up and swallow me whole.

All I could possibly hope for, at this point, was that Blue lost the damned bet. I did _not_ want to attend this accursed function. Not now, not ever, and most certainly not on another person's account, all because I made some stupid promise.

**- - x x x x x - -**

**BACKCHAT**_**!**_**: Oh god, this chapter was a doozy. I wrote most of it a while ago, got distracted, and abandoned it for a few days due to…um. Homework. And completing SoulSilver. Yeeeah. So, well, exams are around the corner, and the next update will probably be in…gee, I dunno. A few weeks? I'm afraid the time of Speedy Gonzales-esque updates has temporarily come to a close, but don't fret! We're, by my estimation, probably about halfway through this odyssey. Bear with me!**

**Andand. I have lots of fun writing as Green…just because. I don't know, but I tend to write grumpy guys better than happy dorks 8'D Don't ask why the first section came out so freakishly long. I just kept adding more and more to it, because Green/Blue interaction is awesome. And believe you me, Blue's a lot smarter than she lets on. Obfuscating stupidity gets you very far, in this case 8D**

**Yes, this was sort of based on my own experienced in tenth grade learning how to waltz and all that. It wasn't as bad as Green makes it out to be, apart from the prerequisite foot-steppings and reluctant partners, haha.**

**Okay well. Enough from me. Great love to all of you who faved/reviewed, and as always, I love to see what y'all have to say. Of course, this chapter probably has (more than) a few errors after I got tired of proof-reading at 2am [hello, best story-writing time ever], so, uh, as always, bear with me.**

**Peace out!**


	5. step five: preparing for the best

**Disclaimer: I do not and never will own Pokémon, or Pokémon Special. And this disclaimer business is getting old, but whatever.**

**- - x x x x x - -**

Before I knew it, revision week was upon us. Whilst we had had a few more dance lessons before the full-on, non-stop revision began, those short, fun sessions were long gone, and now I found myself virtually living in the library, doing more studying than I had ever done in my entire life. Now, don't let it be said that I consistently failed all my classes: that was far from the truth. I cheated, yes, but I also made decent grades, occasionally coming out top of the class if it was a topic I was particularly interested in. Not that it happened all-that-often, but, hey, it's the effort that counts, isn't it? Ha ha ha.

Now, rather than just lounging around and having fun, or being dragged out to watch movie after movie with Sapphy, or on the slightly less frequent shopping trips with Platina, I found myself cooped up in my room and poring over stack upon stack of textbooks, making copious amounts of notes which would have made Green proud, and living off midnight mocha lattes, instant-messaging conversations with Yellow and Crys on topics like science and history, and the rare chat with Green, during the few times he logged in. I found myself unable to concentrate properly during those times, though, and more often than not just ended up bugging him on the most irrelevant and random of topics, during which he would abruptly log off again. Typical.

Even though I now spent my time doing little much else, I still made a point of insisting on those weekly revision sessions with Green: after all, it helped quite a lot when I wasn't being distracted by _him_, and his presence was a good reminder of the promise he had made. That was phase one complete: he was, in his own way, asking me out to the ball – fair enough, I had to fulfil my side of the deal as well, but that was beside the point, I was entirely certain it was a feat I could achieve – and it was hard not to let that little triumph get to my head.

Despite the fact that he was as grudging as ever, he seemed to mind me less now, and even allowed me to pester him about things in general without too much grumbling. He seemed to have more or less accepted me into his 'circle', and as such had pretty much stopped objecting to me being too close, which was a bit of a downer: it was so cute watching him get flustered when I invaded his personal space. It seemed physical closeness was not something he did too well, but being around me so often meant he got used to it. What a shame. He always looked so…I don't know. Oddly vulnerable? When he turned red like that, and coughed that little protesting, indignant cough of his when I got too near. It detracted from the fact that he had the tendency to be just plain mean most of the time.

Of course, he'd probably kill me if I said that to his face. Or have an aneurysm on the spot. Probably the latter, though.

During one such day, in the midst of scribbling an extended-answer response to a question – _Discuss, with reference to relevant texts, the Creation Myth of Sinnoh, and present your own opinion and/or depiction of the myth, taking into account your context as a student_. – I leaned back against the tree, absently tapping my chin with my pencil. "Say, I know this is a practice question from last year's exam and all," I muttered, letting my head drop to rest against the rough bark, "but how're _you _going to mark it? It's not like you're an examination marker and know the marking key or anything…"

Green snorted under his breath. "_I _may not be an examination marker," he began, "but my grandfather is. I get the past papers and marking keys from him, and work to structure my answers in a manner that satisfies the criteria points for all the questions."

I groaned. "Sounds like an awfully tedious process."

"Tedious it may be, but these are skills you really need to work on. Your knowledge of all the main subjects being tested has grown by leaps and bounds, and you can write sufficient short-answer responses. However, when it comes to elaborating upon your own points, you don't do too well."

"Huh." I straightened, and stared down at my notepad in front of me, wondering if my answer was long enough. "Well, at any rate, I've had more than enough of Creation Myths from Hoenn _and_ Sinnoh. You know what? I give up for today. My brain's fried, after you made me go through all of Blaine's equations and Fantina's conjugations again." I yanked off the top sheet, passing it over to him. "Ugh, here you go. I don't want to look at another essay for the rest of my life!"

He didn't answer, and sighed irritably under his breath. "Fine, fine. Just as long as you actually manage to address the question this time around."

"I always answer the question! What are you talking about?" I watched as Green whipped out his intimidating-looking red pen and set to reading through my essay. "Say, I have a question," I began lazily, cupping my chin in my hands as I stared at him; he gave no visible reaction, merely jerking his head slightly to prompt me to continue.

"What do you want to be after you graduate from university?"

"Hnn?" He peered closely at my handwriting, before waving the sheet at me. "What does this word say?"

I scooted over closer, to squint at it. "Uhhh…temporo-spacial?"

"Oh. Right." He lapsed back into silence, twirling his pen around his fingers as he read.

"…Hey, did you even hear my question?"

"What? Oh. Right. That. I'm not sure yet. Probably do some research thesis on evolution theory or something. Maybe become a scientist. Go into R&D. Or, heck, a teacher—no, actually, that's an appalling notion. Forget I said that last one."

"Wow, ambitious. What's so bad about being a teacher, anyways?"

At the question, he glanced sharply at me, before bursting out in a sudden fit of disbelieving laughter. "What's so bad? I have to teach people, that's what. And we all know people don't like being told they don't know everything."

I scowled at him. "Is that meant to be an insult?"

Green raised his eyebrows mockingly at me, a one-sided smirk on his face. "Hnn, I don't know. What do you think?"

"Puh. Obnoxious meanie."

"Stop using my words, obnoxious woman."

Wow, that sure derailed quickly. I attempted to steer the conversation back to less confrontational waters. "So…uh, where were we? Oh, yes. Future career options and all that jazz. I take it you're going to follow in your grandfather's footsteps?"

He scowled slightly. "No, not exactly." Shoot. I remembered. He didn't like being compared to his family. Oh, gee, Blue, way to go. Make an epic blunder like this, won't you?

"Ah…right, sorry…I, um, forgot."

"Mm-hmm. What about you?"

Me? I was momentarily taken aback. To be frank, I hadn't really thought about it. My life up until now had just been about having as much fun as I could, and worrying about the big things when they rolled around. "I don't really know," I answered as honestly as I could; a few possible ideas were rolling around in my head like a bag of marbles, though I wondered if he'd laugh if he heard them.

"You should have some idea."

"Fine, fine, I do. Promise you won't laugh."

"Why would I laugh?" He sounded incredulous, which made me appreciate him all the more; whilst Sapph would have laughed her head off and said something about how something like this didn't suit me, I wanted to try it out, regardless of what everyone else said.

"Uhm…I don't know. Because it's silly?"

"Nothing's silly if you really want to do it."

He had a good point. Damn him and his genius logic! "Okay, well, I always sort of wanted to be a journalist or something. Or, who knows? Maybe even a researcher. Or a designer. Or…" My sudden brilliant burst of inspiration ran out, and I snapped my mouth shut, feeling embarrassed that I had divulged so much to him. I mean, sure, I liked him, he was great company when he actually joked around and loosened up a bit, and was very, _very_ easy on the eyes, but we weren't quite…you know. On _that_ level of comfort yet. Not like Ruby and Sapph, anyways…oh gods, why was I comparing Green and myself to them? We didn't even _have_ a relationship, save for the purely…uh, _professional_ one we were having now. No, actually, that makes it sounds much worse than it actually is. Gah, stupid pretty boy and him messing up my thoughts.

Green finally diverted his attention away from my horrible essay, to stare at me with keen interest, if that's what his expression could best be described as. "Nothing wrong with that. Why do you find it so embarrassing?"

I shrugged. "Because I suppose a lot of people think it's not very…_me_. Everybody reckons I'm more of a party-girl sort of person, you know?"

He stifled an amused snort with great difficulty. "I don't blame them—hey!"

I gaped at him with baffled indignation. "How awful of you," I sniffed, "to tease me like that. Even though I like to have fun, I have aspirations too, okay?"

Thankfully, his smug grin vanished as soon as he heard the word 'tease'; a scowl replaced his earlier expression, and he snorted under his breath, averting his eyes. "You wish." Before I could open my mouth to object _again,_ and before I could blink, he reverted to his customary look of detached indifference, shrugging noncommittally. "Right, aspirations. As much as the next person."

"Exactly! Hey—" I punched his shoulder as he chuckled under his breath again. "I sort of liked it more when you ignored me" I told him in my most injured tone. "At least you weren't so mean to me then!"

Though I didn't add that his pros far outweighed his cons. Crys, by this point, had had enough of me quite nearly stalking him around the place and watching him during P.E. As a result, she no longer allowed herself to be dragged around, not even if she got the chance to ogle a certain someone – which she always vehemently denied, pooh, as well as informing me I was the only one shallow enough to 'ogle' – and left me alone to watch Green as he went about his usual business.

If I didn't know better, I'd have said I was turning into something of a stalker. Even Yellow timidly told me as such, after I spent one fine afternoon towing her around and using her huge art portfolio as a disguise.

I was jolted from my happy reminiscing by Green suddenly snapping his fingers in front of my face. "Yeah? Well, I sort of prefer those early days too. Back when you hadn't started bugging me every single hour for answers to Wattson's physics project, and calling me every few minutes to tell me what Falkner gave Janine the other day, and why you think Gold and your friend would be perfect together, when clearly it seems as though his feelings are not being reciprocated, understandably enough. And no, I do not need to know what Silver thinks of our study sessions, and I would like you to remind him of the fact that all we do during such times is just that: study."

"Puh," I muttered, attempting to bat him away, "you talk too much, you know that?"

"That's quite something, coming from the likes of you," he told me, now resuming his essay-marking. "I'm not the one ringing people up at twelve in the morning screaming hysterically about overdue homework and demanding – not politely requesting for, but _obnoxiously demanding – _the aforementioned person to stay up for an additional two hours to help me complete my neglected work. Speaking of which. Your design tech portfolio's due tomorrow, even though it's non-assessment week. _Why_ I even know your homework load a lot better than you, I don't even know. Isn't that what you have your friends for?"

I frowned. "What, you don't consider me one of your friends?"

Green snorted with what most people would have read as disbelief, but was what I had come to know as his version of incredulous amusement. "Friends are, as is often the case, voluntarily made. I don't think you happen to stalk your friends or text them at five in the morning about essays now, do you? I suppose if I were to call you a friend, you'd fall under the 'rather-annoying-but-can't-get-rid-of-her-and-might-as-well-just-continue-to-associate-with-her' friend. No offence intended. Though that said, I don't tend to take complete strangers to something as headache-inducing as a school dance, so…ugh, I don't know. Consider yourself the first and the last. Or whatever."

"No offence taken." Well, at least I knew where we stood now. "It's a level up from 'creepy-stalker-girl-whom-you-have-never-spoken-to-but-see-everywhere acquaintance, am I right?"

"…I have no idea where you pulled that notion from," he said with a remarkably straight face – could he really, really be that oblivious to things other than cold hard logic and whatnot? Oh, what a revelation – "but yes. I'd suppose so. Why? Do you happen to know someone like that?"

"I wonder how I could possibly shut you up at this rate," I said as loudly as I could; he shot me swift glare.

"Whatever it is you're thinking," he began heatedly, "stop it. Now. I don't like it when your voice gets like that. It usually means you have something bad planned for me."

"Oh ho ho, somebody's a sharp one. Now, how's my essay going? It's the stuff of university-level treatises and theses, is it not?"

"Ha, ha, you flatter yourself." Ooh, burn. Not that I minded much, really. If my plan succeeded beyond my wildest imaginations, dreams and fancies, we would eventually have something going on, a something almost maybe on par with what Ruby and Sapph had. Hmmm. That was actually a nice thought, never mind the fact that Green would probably have even greater opportunities to be as grumpy and snide as ever.

All for the greater good, I always say.

**- - x x x x x - -**

By the time the last class before the exams rolled by, I was in a state of near-panic. Agatha was well-known for being quite the taskmaster, and did not believe in letting any of her students off easy. As I attempted to keep up a written conversation with Sapph, who had already copied down all the notes on the board in her charmingly illegible shorthand scrawl, I silently cursed the difficulty of all my courses, the sheer amount of writing and thinking involved in all of them and the fact that I had yet to develop a system of quick note-taking. Whilst Sapph was now staring at the board with her mouth slightly open and with a slightly dazed, unfocused look in her eyes, everyone around her was still scribbling furiously, wincing every so often when they got to the end of a line.

Never had Sapphy looked more…well, _dumb jock_-like. Many were inclined to believe she was one, though looking at her grades and at the quality and consistency of her work would convince one otherwise…if they managed to look past the alarmingly frequent spelling and grammar errors, her disdain for proper capitalisation and fondness for gratuitous punctuation usage, and the terrible, terrible Torchic-scratch handwriting.

I shoved the scrap of notepaper back at her. _Can I borrow your notes? I have the feeling Agatha's going to wipe the board soon._

No sooner had she read the message when, without prior warning, the elderly teacher erased most of the notes we had been copying, causing a barrage of groans to arise from the front row. Sapph grinned and nodded.

As the grumpy old lady began to produce more complicated-looking hypothesis statements and whatnot on the board, I decided I had had enough of writing for the day and resigned myself to staring slack-jawed and glassy-eyed towards the front, absently twirling my pen around my fingers. Now was a perfect time to plot out how the rest of my plan would unfold – shush, I don't lack organisational skills or foresight, but that's…another story – and perhaps figure out what to do for the rest of the day.

Sadly, Sapph decided to interrupt my contented daydreaming with an elbow to the ribs.

I landed back on earth with a jolt and glared accusingly at her; it wasn't as though she was saving my hide from Agatha asking me some question on philosophy or another, so, really, what gives?

She pointed at the note she had shoved at me. I picked it up, attempting to decipher the hieroglyphic-like scribbling on it. And then it hit me.

Grabbing my pen, I began to write as quickly as possible. _Sapphy dearie, are you nuts? You want to go shopping? Today? Seriously? Are you okay? Not sick or anything? During recess…did you taste anything weird in the canteen food or something?_

This prompted a rather alarmingly feral scowl from her as she yanked the scrap of paper back and began to write. I peered at her handwriting.

_The stupid dance is one week after the exams, right? Well, seeing as how the inter-school athletics tournament is on that week, I won't have time to go shopping and you-know-who is telling me to get a move on or he's going to buy my dress for me…or worse still, make it. C'mon, Blue, you know how he is with these things. _She shot me a long-suffering look as she jabbed her pen onto the sheet with sudden force.

I hid a smirk from her. It was true; Ruby was one of the few – or perhaps was the only one, ha ha ha – males who actually cared about appearances. Being the first to see Sapphy in a dress would be quite the experience in itself, and even though my conscience was telling me to gently but firmly turn her offer down and go straight home for more cram-studying, this was too good an opportunity to refuse. Seeing as how she was asking me to come along, it meant she needed help, because the whole world knew Sapphire Birch was horrible at shopping, outfit-picking and colour-coordination, and, as a matter of fact, never went to buy clothes because Ruby usually took care of that for her. Plus, since she had to listen to me and trust my judgment, it meant I could nag her into doing…well, whatever I wanted. Though I suppose Sapphy would draw the line at looking like an extravagantly overembellished pink, sparkly wedding cake.

_All right, sure, sure, I'll tag along. I suppose I should start looking for my outfit, too. Are the others coming?_

_Pffffffft, of course they are. Or at least, I think so. Yellow and Platina won't mind, and I think one of 'em mentioned something about shopping the other day as well. The main problem will be Crys, though. I have the feeling Miss Studypants will be the most stubborn one. Speaking of Studypants. Who crowned you the new Queen of Studying?_

I was saved from having to write out a reply by the bell, and Agatha sharply informing the class that even though she wasn't assigning homework this week, that did not mean we could slack off. As an undercurrent of chatter broke out around us, I sighed noisily, stuffing my books into my bag. "Sapphy, didn't you hear? If I want my plan to succeed in all its glorious splendour, I have to ace the exams, big-time."

She raised her eyebrows, blue eyes sparkling with mischief. "Oh-ho? What's this news I haven't heard yet? No little Chatot saw fit to tell me." She pouted a little at that, until I thumped her.

"Are you serious? What rock have you been living under?"

"Shut up, you. Answer my question!"

"We-ell, you see, I got Green to agree to a little bargain." I grinned at Sapph, attempting to gauge her reaction; she raised her eyebrows in response.

"Uh-huh, and so? Oi, spit it out, I'm no mind-reader. Who do you think I am? Sabrina?"

"Our little deal basically goes like this: if I ace the exams like nobody's business, he'll take me to the ball as a…hmm, _reward_, so to speak. For being a good little student. Amazing, eh? I never really thought he'd be the kinda guy to resort to bribery."

"No kidding," Sapph breathed, shouldering her bag. "He must really, really take this tutoring thing seriously, if he makes an offer like that." A sudden thought struck her, and she frowned, stopping short to stare at me just as she made to push the lecture theatre's door open. "Makes an offer like that…honey, did you…I don't know. _Suggest_ him to do that?"

I ignored her slightly confusing sentence. "Oh, tosh. Of course not. He came up with it by himself! I suppose it says something about him, hmmm? Speaking of which…remind me to go find him sometime today. I need to ask him something."

"No kidding," she repeated. With a shake of her head, Sapph hoisted up her bag, before turning to me. "Wait? Ask him what? No, actually, don't answer that. When you grin like that, it means it's something hush-hush and you ain't gonna tell me. Pft, suit yourself. Now hurry up, I'm starved, and there's sure to be a line thirty miles long at the canteen."

**- - x x x x x - -**

After school, as Platina, Yellow and myself loitered by the school gates waiting for the athletics people to make their appearance, I found myself attempting to dig a bit deeper into their, uh, plans for the ball; Yellow was surprisingly reticent, if even more so than usual. Even with Platina and me prompting her, she just blushed beetroot-red and vaguely muttered something neither of us could hear; not that the same couldn't be said for Miss State Debating Champion, though. When Yellow attempted to change the subject and divert the attention towards the other girl, Platina just smiled a little and airily waved her hand, telling us we'd find out sooner or later, and refused to say anything more.

Ugh, spoilsports.

Thankfully, this awkward stalemate of sorts didn't last that long before a red-faced Sapph and windswept-looking Crys jogged up, apologising profusely for being late. I noted that Sapphy had been dragging her companion along with no small degree of force, and the dark-haired girl was looking slightly annoyed, as she attempted to disengage herself from Sapph's strong grip.

"Now, really, the exams are just three days away and you all want to go shopping? Don't any of you have any sense of prioritising? At all? Bar Platina, of course. And you guys really shouldn't be dragging Yellow around as well, I'm sure she has much better things to be doing other than shopping."

Sapph and I shot each other guilty looks.

Yellow blinked sheepishly. "Um…well, not really…" Her voice trailed off, and she grinned apologetically. "See, well, most of my courses are arts and design ones, and, um, the compulsories like English and maths and whatnot…so I don't have that much cramming to be doing. Except for perhaps art theory and creative expression and all that."

"…uh-huh. I'll pretend I know what all that's about, then. But, ah, you don't mind joining us, right?" Just to be on the safe side, you know? In case the poor thing ended up having an utterly horrifying time with us. I, for one, did not earn the title of 'She Who Should Not Be Let Loose With A Credit Card Or Too Many Pokédollars' for no good reason. Crys and Platina were okay shopping buddies, they didn't tend to get utterly sidetracked by bargains and all that and could actually resist the urge to buy things, though Sapph…well, she hated shopping on principle.

"Oh, no, not at all! I figured if I was going to go dress-shopping, it'd be best to go with you guys…because I don't really know a lot on how to pick suitable clothes and all that."

"Well, that's settled, then. What're we waiting for?"

**- - x x x x x - -**

Half an hour later, we had finally arrived at the local mall strip of sorts, and naturally, this was my time to shine. It felt pretty good to be the one in the know this time; after all, this was my area of expertise, as the others knew all-too-well. Before long, I had succeeded in shepherding the others towards my favourite boutique, and, judging from the expressions on Yellow, Crys and Sapphy's faces, they weren't quite sure what to make of what they saw.

"Why do you even have a favourite dress boutique?" Sapph demanded grumpily, as she took in the rows and rows of dresses with a rather sour look on her face; evidently, she was regretting her earlier enthusiasm and wished she was back at home. "It's not as if we have that many functions to wear dresses to…and you don't wear them that often either, do you?" She gingerly poked at a pretty rose-pink satin and tulle masterpiece, wincing slightly. "Not these kinds, at any rate. Who wants to look like a wedding cake every day?"

"Shush you. Wait till you try one on, and then you'll realise why it's such a big deal."

"Yeah, yeah, sure. Hey Platina, is she right? Or just babbling another load of Tauros poop?"

"Hmm?" Platina glanced over from the rack of extravagantly expensive dresses she was browsing. "About what?"

"This looking-like-a-sparkly-wedding-cake business. What's so great about it, anyways?"

"Ah, well, it gives you a chance to experience something different, so to speak. Every girl likes being dressed up and looking her finest every now and then…though in your case I'd assume it's leaning more towards the 'then' end of the spectrum."

"Uhh…yeah. Hey, what d'ya guys think of this?" Sapph held up a lime-green number which didn't really suit her all that well.

Platinum glanced over at her. "Absolutely not."

"What? Why? It's nice! It's got a nice, natural colour!"

"…it's green. And not a very flattering shade, I might add. Put it back this instant, Sapphire, I'm sure you'll find other things which will appeal more to you."

"Yes, precisely, it's gloriously green!' Sapph ignored most of what the other girl said, and tugged the dress away from the rack, twirling around with it. "I like it. It makes me feel more attuned with nature, and less like I'm wearing synthetic goods…though the smell of the fabric gives it away." She pulled a face.

At that point, a smiling shop assistant decided it was a good time to approach us. "Do you ladies need any help?"

"Ye—"

"No, we're fine," I said, cutting across Yellow; she frowned slightly, but said nothing.

"All right then. Give me a holler if you have any questions."

As soon as she was out of earshot, Yellow stared up at me, wringing her hands. "But I _do _need help! I don't know what to get! I can't really find anything I really, really like! D'you reckon I should ask Sapphire?" She gestured over to where Sapphy was arguing with Platina about the merits of how green was soothing to one's eyes and how she didn't care whether it was flattering to her figure or features or not.

"What? Ask Sapphy? Oh, no, no, no. If you're that stuck, ask me! I'm sure I'll be able to find you something nice. After all, this is what I'm a real pro at."

"She has a point," Crys interrupted, sidling between us and studiously ignoring the squabble behind her. "Though her work in history and discrete maths is improving immensely as well. Hmm…anyways, about dresses, ask Blue. She knows what she's doing, and won't give you something horrible to wear." She rolled her eyes a little at that. "If anything, she'll probably view it as a personal insult if you don't get complimented by every boy who claps eyes on you."

"Of course it's an insult! Now shoo, go find some choices and show me when you're done." I watched as Crys disappeared amongst the racks of dresses, before turning back to Yellow. "Now, if you can't find anything suitable here, we could always go to the next shop. Don't let yourself be limited in choice! Though, heh heh, budget's another thing."

"Mmhm," Yellow mumbled under her breath, absently twirling a strand of blonde hair around her index finger. "But, well, I don't really know where to start. What colour should I be going for?"

Sapph chose that moment to sneak up behind us and sling her arms around our necks. "If there's one bit of friendly advice I can give you, it's this: don't go for something as cliché as a colour to match your eyes. Because, for starters, most of us have blue eyes here, and it sure ain't gonna help much if we all turn up looking like…I dunno, freezer-packs and Yellow's in the middle looking like an adorable buttercup. Ugh, talk about an overload of bleh."

"…bleh?" Yellow echoed doubtfully.

"Yeah, bleh! Don't you know? Blue's like, a passive, uhh, depressive-ish colour! That's why there's that term, ya know? 'Hey, why so blue today?' Or, umm, 'Monday blues'! Heh heh heh."

"Hey!"

"Ahahaha, sorry, Blue. But you get my point! And we all know _this _Blue is the furthest thing from gloomy."

"If I didn't know better, I could swear Ruby was teaching you colour theory or something. Is he getting into interior design or something anytime soon?"

"You know she's just saying that so that she can get the green dress, right?" Platina's voice wafted back towards us; Sapph scowled.

"Whyever not? Besides, won't it be cool if we dress in rainbow colours?"

Judging from the horrified splutter that the usually all-too-composed Platina responded with, Sapph's suggestion was not really met with much enthusiasm. "Are you insane? Do you want to look as though you stole and dressed yourself in Ho-Oh's plumage?"

"No, doofus." It was pretty rich of Sapph to be calling Platinum Berlitz, of all people, _doofus_. "What I mean is, each of us go in one colour. Of the rainbow. So like, someone wears, blue, someone wears red, someone wears, orange, someone wears yellow…and someone wears green, and so on and so forth!"

"You know…for someone who claims to hate dresses and shopping and girly things like colour-coordinating and whatnot, you sure come up with good ideas," I told her, feeling slightly bemused.

Sapph grinned broadly. "Exactly! So, heh, dibs on green! And, fine, fine, I won't go with the lime green. What about this pretty dark seaweed-ish green?"

Platina groaned. "You're insufferable," she muttered under her breath, before resuming her browsing.

**- - x x x x x - -**

Surprisingly enough, we had all found a few dresses we quite liked in that one store, and as a result, everyone was trying things on. Seeing as how I had settled on my purchase relatively early – I had called dibs on blue (and all its various shades and whatnot) and found myself a nice dark midnight blue silk and satin number which I had almost fallen in love with at first sight – I now had the official duty of deciding what was 'hot' and what was 'not' for the others.

Sapph had pretty much gathered every single remotely green dress she could lay hands on, and was now cursing and swearing eloquently as she tried to fiddle with all the zippers, ribbons, lace and whatnot which was doubtless annoying the living daylights out of her. Poor thing. She had really been looking forwards to this little escapade, too, though from what it seemed, I could safely assume this would be the first and the last time she would allow herself to do dress-shopping, of all things. After much deliberation, and my having to help her in getting the dress to sit properly, she finally settled on a deep forest-green layered dress; it wasn't so much the colour that surprised me, though. I must admit, she did choose a pretty outfit, but I hadn't figured in a million years she'd wear it: the top half was simple enough, though the skirt itself was another story, literally being made of layer upon layer of chiffon 'leaves' which, if anything, hinted at…I don't know. A wedding cake-y look. I mean, it was a nice dress, but…the layers. From what Sapph had yelled about earlier, and how she vehemently swore not to look like a multi-storeyed cake, I'd never have thought she and layers mixed.

To each their own, I suppose.

Platina chose something really sleek and elegant-looking, all pale periwinkle…or was it lavender? I was never good with all this colour-describing business. Wait. Where was I? Oh yes. Her dress. It was a pretty thing, the sparkly diamantes and whatnot, and fitted her to a T, and not really overembellished, too. But then and again, she had excellent taste, and I didn't expect anything less from Platinum Berlitz.

Yellow and Crys had taken a bit longer; however, it took quite an effort of will to hide my triumphant grin when Crys eventually made her decision – hello, all my suspicions had been confirmed, not that they weren't all that suspicious already; it was pretty obvious, you know, once you looked hard enough…and knew where to look – and poor Yellow almost had a nervous breakdown halfway through the entire ordeal. Not that I blamed her, though. Such intensive shopping for a neophyte _was_ quite tiring. After much deliberation, more fruit smoothies for a little energy boost and a chorus of appreciative 'oohs' and 'aahs' from myself, Platina, Sapph and Crys, she made her purchase, though not before apologising profusely for keeping us there so long. It was worth the wait, though: she chose a black dress which contrasted quite strikingly with her hair and eyes, and after the entire affair, I found myself congratulating…well, myself for the time well spent. Hey, I mean, the black dress is timeless and goes with practically everything. Believe me, I know.

Of course, now was probably not a good time to break the news that we eventually had to buy shoes and all the other stuff as well. All in due course. Heh.

**- - x x x x x - -**

I must say, for a group of four girls – one a complete and utter, seasoned shopaholic, the other a total greenhorn to this whole business, one who detested dresses on principle, one who didn't really care what she bought and the other who was every bit as efficient as I was, if not more – we got done surprisingly quickly. By the time we traipsed out of the shop – the assistant looked rather relieved to see us out, after Sapph chucked a mini-tantrum when she realised just what the heck she was doing, buying a dress and all that – it wasn't even that dark yet, and as we bade one another good night and set off for home, I found myself feeling oddly relieved, though that pleasant feeling was soon dispelled by guilt: I should have been working on my revision and aiming to secure my place as one of the top students in the year.

Of course, I found it rather amusing that the only reason I was doing this was so that I could go to the school ball with a guy who probably barely even cared about it. But then and again, I had to remind myself that he would doubtless look pretty fine on the night itself…not to mention the fact that I found myself genuinely interested in pursuing him.

…ugh. This should really be the other way around. Since when did girls have to chase after boys? How silly. Since when did nature flip itself right over like this?

As we walked home in relative peace and quiet, Crys nudged me quietly. "Pokédollar for your thoughts."

"Hnn-what?"

"What's on your mind? You're really quiet tonight."

"Yeah…I guess."

"What's up? You look…I don't know. Thoughtful."

I shrugged. "Oh, not much. Just thinking about things, you know?"

She smiled faintly. "Worried about the exams? Eh, well, I'm sure they're not going to be that bad. It's not as if this term's results are going to weigh that heavily on our final grade, anyways."

"No, no, not really. And it's not really my final grade that I'm worried about. It's more along the lines of whether I can keep up my side of the bargain."

"Ah. Right. I must admit, it's rather steep. Even though I don't really want to be discouraging, but, hey, there are a lot of people in this year, and scoring in the very top percentage isn't going to be easy."

"Yeah, I know. Especially if I'm up against people like you, Platina and Sapph."

"What? Us? Pfft, you have nothing to worry about. You're working extremely hard, and anyone can see that. You know, I have the feeling that he agreed to this because…I don't know. He knew you'd definitely be up the challenge, and would be able to do whatever you have to do. Besides, boys…well, you know how they are with deals. Evasive and whatnot."

I stared at her. "Really?"

She nodded, star earrings sparkling as she bobbed her head. "Yep."

"Since when did you become that perceptive? I mean, you were always perceptive, but, like, on the subject of, uhh, males."

Crys sighed shortly. "I'm not really sure. Maybe it's because this guy with the perceptiveness of a sock is…agh, never mind."

I stopped, hiding a grin as I stared her in the eye. "Is this about who I think it is?"

She shot me a sharp glare. "What? N-no!"

"Oh ho ho ho! That confirms my suspicions. That, and the choice of dress you made. I must say, dark champagne silk? I never expected you to go for that! Didn't really quite think you liked that sort of style, really…but I guess you prove me wrong!"

She scowled, though it was hard to disguise the faint flush creeping up her neck and across her cheeks. "Oh, Blue," she sighed disparagingly. "The one time I want you to just drop it, you don't."

"Ah, fine, fine, just for you. But…"

Crys rounded on me, nearly whacking me in the shins with her shopping bag. "But what?"

"I'd say he's pretty interested in you, though."

She crossed her arms and stalked onwards with a grim look on her face. "Stop saying silly things like that."

"But it's true!" I stifled a laugh at her expression. "All the none-too-subtle hints he drops…and from what Silver tells me, even though he's full of hot air, bluster and whatnot, he's rather nervous of…you know. Just asking you out of the blue."

"Hnnngh. Not helping, Blue. I preferred it when you were antagonising Sapphire about that load of green dresses she picked out…and when you were too busy drowning Yellow in a pile of clothes to start nagging me."

"Nagging? Hardly! My dear, I'm doing this for your own good. _Someone _needs to take the initiative, and if you keep playing shy, and if he keeps acting confused, then I'll take this into my own hands. Tell you what, why don't I arrange a little rendezvous on Monday? Hmm? Hmm? What do you say?"

"I say no!" Crystal snapped as she stopped short in front of her house, fiddling with the gate. "The exams start on Monday, remember? I'm pretty certain you want to pay more attention to seeing your little scheme to the end than in trying to set up not-so-secret meetings for people!"

I sighed. "Darn, you have a point. Can't let all my effort go to waste now, can I?"

She snorted noncommittally under her breath. "Indeed. Anyways, thanks for helping us out today, I don't think we could've done it without you…" Her voice dropped to a bemused mumble. "_Shopping_, of all things."

"Hohohoho, no problem. See you Monday, all right? And remember, if you two still keep playing hard-to-get, it's time to call in the big guns, that is, yours truly. You know who to call!" With a wink and a grin, I waltzed away before she could respond, waving cheekily at her as she opened her mouth to protest. I proceeded to make a beeline straight for home; pretty lucky we were practically neighbours, I'd say. Then and again, it wasn't that huge a city…town…whatever that we lived in. Everybody was pretty much neighbours with everybody.

After traipsing into the house and loudly announcing myself in my customary, so-called _obnoxious_ manner, I only realised after flopping down on my bed that once again, I didn't manage to corner Green after school and ask him…drat, what had I wanted to tell him?

Ah, well. This could probably wait until next week.

**- - x x x x x - -**

**BACKCHAT**_**!**_**: ARGH. Late chapter is late, a little bit longer than usual, and…what else? Ah, yes. The quality probably fluctuates quite a fair bit, since I ended up writing bits and pieces between my exams. Hahaha. Now that they're over, I look forward to trying to finish this – goshdarn, it'll be the first ever chaptered fic I complete, snnrk – and, y'know, maybe starting on new things! All in due course, though. Also, I lack organisational skills and in general most skills. So, err, yes. Don't mind me too much. ;A;**

**A huge thank-you to all my readers for your patience, as well as the good luck wishes! (: My exams themselves weren't that bad, haha, though the results…are another thing. Oh dear. Anyways, um, where was I? Oh yes. Also, a huge thanks to my reviewers, too! I find what you have to say very encouraging, and also helps give me ideas. **

**Uhh, well, if you see any spelling or grammatical errors, continuity fails or anything else, don't hesitate to point them out; as I mentioned, writing this took place over several days – weeks, even – and as such I tend to lose track of what I was supposed to have said, blah blah blah. Terrible, I know ): And I lack proper proof-reading skills. Speed-reading for the win! Not. **


	6. step six: acknowledging defeat

**Disclaimer: I do not and never will own Pokémon, or Pokémon Special. **

**- - x x x x x - -**

Revision week passed in a blur; before any of us knew it, Agatha was emphasising the importance of revision and good time management every few lessons, with customary ill humour. Seeing as how she only ever allowed the best students to stay in her class, it was only understandable that she did not want to waste time on stragglers and slackers; as she spoke, I cast a meaningful glance towards Blue, who only winked cheekily at me, before continuing to take notes on our lecture.

This was one of the few times I actually saw her writing anything, or doing anything truly productive outside of our revision sessions. It went without saying that by this time, I was beginning to feel highly apprehensive; in retrospect, my 'promise' now seemed like a horrible blunder on my part, and I should never have been foolish enough to open my mouth and actually say it. Horror of horrors, this would actually mean I had to attend that…that _damned dance_. I couldn't break a promise, for that would be…I don't know. Probably on par with the most heinous things Agatha promised if she caught anyone cheating on the exam.

…which leads to the source of my moral dilemma. There was no possible way I could escape from this damned bargain now. After the last revision session we had before exam fortnight began tomorrow, and having checked through her steadily improving line-up of essays, I had to conclude that this time, it seemed as though I actually had start making preparations for that…that idiotic social event.

Unfortunately, the pesky girl seemed alarmingly fond of attempting to find me, and perhaps pigeonhole me again in some way or another; whilst I had to give her some credit, and also admit that she was shaping up to be quite good a student, I had the oddest feeling she had some other agenda on her mind. It was always hard to tell with women. This had reached the point where Red oftentimes kept me informed on the whereabouts of a certain girl, after I had implored him to at least help me find some peace and quiet.

He seemed to find it awfully amusing, though, when I told him Blue kept finding excuses to seek me out. Needless to say, I disagreed heartily with his views. Just because he was enjoying a…_blissful_ relationship – which, I must add, he was largely reluctant to discuss, and only too keen on deflecting questions about – didn't mean the rest of us wanted to be in one.

Not that it was something I was that terribly adverse to, strictly speaking—

Dear lords. What was happening to me? Had that infuriating girl drugged me or something, to make me say such tastelessly _lovelorn _trash like this?

Such was the state of my whirling mind on the morning before our exams were set to begin; what with my assessment timetable and whatnot, I had been up for the vast majority of the night before going over my notes one last time before this. Obviously, having only had three hours of sleep – no thanks to a certain member of the fairer sex who insisted on texting me until the wee hours of the morning with increasingly hysterical messages about what would happen if she failed, and if our deal was off.

I had the strangest feeling that she was bluffing.

Now hunched rather antisocially against a wall, cradling my head and attempting to rest my eyes, I tried to ignore a worried, wide-eyed and wild-haired Red who was fittingly enough, red in the face, and reciting the dates of important historical discoveries and breakthroughs in science in an annoyingly fast monotone drone. "Keep it down, will you? What were you up to last night, anyways? And why do you look like you were chased here by a pack of Ursaring?"

…Blue had pointed out to me some time back that when I got cranky, I began to ask a lot of increasingly pointed questions; I vaguely realised that little fact, but by this point, didn't really care if I 'hurt Red's feelings'. Gulping down the last of my coffee and discarding the container, I lifted my head as high as I could – my neck still hurt like hell, after falling asleep on that stupid textbook – to glare at my friend, attempting to prise an answer from him through the power of my mind alone.

Hah.

Red paused in his increasingly frenetic recital to draw breath, before turning to me and wringing his hands, at the same time managing to scrunch up his revision sheet. "I overslept! I went to bed really early last night – like, I dunno…ten? And thought I'd be up nice and early at five this morning to do some last minute exam prep. But my alarm didn't ring and—" He stopped as soon as I raised my eyebrows at him, narrowing my eyes as his explanation petered out.

"Sure it didn't," I griped under my breath. "_Five_…that's about the time I dozed off. Tell you what, from now on I'm not going to bother with a phone. Tonight, I'll throw it out of my window."

He ignored the second part of my grumbling, and chuckled sheepishly. "Fine, I might have pressed the snooze button one too many times. The bottom line is, I woke up at eight this morning and realised, '_oh shit, I have an exam in exactly an hour_'." Running a hand through his scalp, Red groaned loudly, tugging at clumps of his extremely unruly black hair. "I'm so doomed," he mumbled, leaning back against the wall and slowly sliding down it. "Oh god. I should have set every alarm in my room so that it'd be so noisy that I'd _have_ to get up."

"Mmhmm," I replied, patting him on the shoulder as he slid slowly southwards, still muttering incoherently to himself. I watched as he finally came to a stop on the floor, burying his face in his hands. "Oh, cheer up. You're just over-thinking things. 'M sure you'll do fine. Now stop sulking." I was in no mood to watch Red feel sorry for himself, so I decided to gauge the general mood of the student body this fine morning.

It was chaotic, to be honest. The sixth-formers were surprisingly quiet, huddled near the lockers and all poring over cramped, scribbled annotations in the margins of their textbooks; Phoebe was surprisingly calm, and seemed to be humming under her breath, looking as though she was actually looking forwards to this. It was a different story with most of the other students, though: Erika was attempting to speed-sketch some diagram or another for biology, Whitney was in tears and hysterics, pretty much bawling about how she would end up flunking out and how she'd be the laughingstock of the entire school; an uncomfortable-looking Candice was attempting to calm the other girl down, though it didn't look like her efforts were paying off in the slightest. Roxanne, in contrast, seemed superbly self-confident, and was now absently fanning herself with a textbook which would probably have snapped most other peoples' wrists, and shooting rapid-fire short-answer questions at an increasingly frazzled Brawly. Karen and Sabrina were undoubtedly the calmest out of the whole lot, with the latter's expression bordering on the bored.

Can't say I didn't envy her. She probably had a pretty good idea of what we would be facing in those wretched papers in a few minutes.

Lost in my ruminations, I failed to notice a certain diminutive figure stealing behind me to jab me in the ribs; I turned, ready to snap at whoever it was, and found myself half-smothered as she clamped her hand over my nose and mouth, stopping me from saying anything whatsoever. For a moment, I was too flabbergasted to do anything, until I realised just who was in front of me.

Whilst under normal conditions, a stream of colourful profanities, as well as a few choice jibes, would have been unleashed by now, the only sound I could make was pretty much an incomprehensible mumble. Blue waggled her finger at my face, eyes sparkling with mischief, before releasing me. "Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?"

"Yes, actually. Plenty of people. Mostly you, though. What do you want? Normal people say hello, but you just _have _to assault and half-throttle me, don't you? Creativity is very much admired and appreciated, but that's going a bit too far," I hissed in a single breath, until I caught sight of her proud smirk. I was right in suspecting something was afoot; whilst she had sounded positively panicky the night before, today, she looked almost as at ease and confident as Roxanne. Surely, had she truly been worried, she would be bobbing about now with hands clasped anxiously, like Whitney.

"Hmm, I was right. You talk far too much. We'll need to fix that for our evening." I can't say I cared for her wide grin, and only squinted suspiciously at her in response. She was saved from being bombarded by a barrage of pointed questions when Bertha threw the Grand Hall doors open, and instructed the students to enter as quietly as possible, or get failed on the spot. Her expression of profound grumpiness only further reinforced her warning, and the noise level in the background fell as though someone had pulled an imaginary plug.

Everyone filed silently into their seats, far too apprehensive to say anything; Blue, who had found a spot some place in front of me, turned around to wink playfully at me. '_Good luck!' _she mouthed, still wearing that smile which, if anything, gave me even more misgivings. Now, I rather regretted being so stringent in my teaching…had I known that my very reputation was at stake – dances…seriously, dances? Good lord, why had I ever agreed to that? I was starting to feel this was a horrible judgmental error on my part. One that I would never, ever live down, for the rest of my existence. Or was this just teenage drama and angst talking? If so, then this was probably a sign that I had been around that girl for far too long, and far too often.

"Students taking History courses, your five minutes reading time commences now," Byron said, voice carrying easily over the silence. "Candidates are not to touch any writing implements until writing time begins."

I stared down at the question paper, thumbing through the pages and taking note of the weightings of each section. So, we had multiple choice, short and extended answers. The latter was sure to be the hardest part to undertake, so…

Flipping over to the last page, I stared at the selection of essay questions we could choose to answer. One of them, in particular, caught my attention, conjuring up a memory of me sitting under a tree and disgruntledly marking a certain girl's response: _Discuss, with reference to relevant texts, the Creation Myth of Sinnoh, and the Fourth Golem, and present your own opinion and/or depiction of the myth, taking into account your context as a student_. I recalled her confident grin, the impish glint in her bright blue eyes, and the pride in her voice as she vociferously presented her essay to me, as the mid-afternoon sunlight glinted off her chestnut hair…

…and, with a snort, began to write. The last thing I needed was unnecessary, annoying distractions from distractingly annoyingly persistent people.

**- - x x x x x - -**

No less than three hours later, we finally traipsed out of the Grand Hall, the complaints of my fellow class-mates increasing in volume the further out of earshot we got of the exam supervisors. No sooner had I collected my bag and made to leave, when Red appeared from the throng, looking ashen. Gold and Silver were in tow, bickering loudly and heatedly at a rate of eighty miles a minute, on whose answer was correct.

I raised my eyebrows at Red. "Think you did well?"

He goggled at me as though he could not believe his ears, and I had suddenly sprouted two extra heads. "Did well? Pfft, how about _no_?"

I sighed as patiently as I could, feeling irritation prickling beneath my skin. "Red, we go through this every year, without fail. You don't spend that much time revising, preferring to goof around until the last minute. Then you cram. Invariably, you're always late for some reason or another. And then once you get here, you angst about how badly you're going to do, and how insanely hard the exam will be—"

"Shut up! I'm telling you, the answer to question 8 was _not_ 1974! Are you really that stupid? And of _course_ the answer to question 2 was C." Gold's voice was successfully drowning out most of the chatter around us, and in contrast, Silver was getting increasingly waspish.

"—and after you go into the exam room, you're fine for a while and after that, it's a different story because you come to me and angst even more. Red, for goodness sake, you'll do fine. That's exactly why you're still in school, and you have yet to fail any of your courses and are achieving a reasonably above average grade for most, if not all of your subjects, so—"

"Idiot," Silver hissed without looking at the other boy, who was positively seething by this point, "you have the memory span worse than that of a Goldeen's. No, that's not true. Your memory span is nonexistent, so how could you possibly be expected to remember the answer to such an _obvious _question?" Surely it was impossible for his voice to drip with more sarcasm than that.

"—so," I continued blandly, trying to make myself heard over the din, "stop complaining and being a worrywart; if you're really that worried, go and prepare for your next exam now."

"But this is our final year!" Red moaned, attempting to strangle the air. "The exams for this year are therefore meant to be the hardest of them all! My luck's going to run out this year, I swear it is…"

The prospect of knocking him out cold was never this tempting. I knew he'd eventually recover, and then get completely and utterly mortified at how whiny and pessimistic he was being…though I reckoned he would only snap out of it once he actually had more food that whatever he had gulped down this morning. "What did you eat before you came here?"

"Oh. Errr…um…"

"I'll take that as a 'nothing'. No wonder you're so unreasonable today. Come on," I said firmly, grabbing hold of his shoulders and steering him out of the way of a gaggle of chattering girls who were comparing notes for their afternoon exam; they paused to give Red odd looks, and I waved their stares away. "Don't mind him, a lot of the people in your year will be like that after your exam, I assure you. You can go give them weird looks then."

"Say," Gold interrupted loudly, breaking off his furious argument with Silver all of a sudden, and appreciatively eying the girls as we passed them, "where is Prissy-Boy, anyways? And Dia and Pearl."

"I presume you're referring to Ruby?" Silver asked snidely; without waiting for a reply, he held up three fingers, ticking off points as he spoke. "Ruby does not have any exams today, so therefore he isn't here. Neither does Diamond. As for Pearl, he has an afternoon exam."

"Aww, bummer," Gold muttered. "Any one of them would have made for better company than you."

"You'll be glad to know that the feeling is mutual," the red-haired boy shot back. Not for the first – or last – time, I wondered just what on earth I was thinking, voluntarily hanging out with the likes of people like these.

**- - x x x x x - -**

Finally having succeeded in frog-marching Red to the nearest diner, and forcibly stuffing him into the closest chair with Silver's help, both of us watched with bemusement as he shovelled down a third helping of curry and rice, looking decidedly chipper compared with his earlier, doom-and-gloom, angst-ridden state. "Glad to see you've recovered," I remarked acidly. Gold frowned at me; I ignored him. What with his hero-worship of Red, and being convinced he was the very best authority when it came to everything, I had long since learnt to take whatever Gold said about Red with a liberal pinch of salt.

No, make that enough salt to give the entire Kanto region hypertension.

Red shrugged in response, looking faintly embarrassed as he set his forkful of rice down. "Eh, well, like you said, it happens every year. Can't help it, y'now? Nerves, and all."

_Nerves_. It was almost funny, seeing him get so worked up over assessments. To be fair, it was somewhat justified, since he was not very fond of studying, or revision in general, and avoided cracking open his textbooks until the last possible moment. However, this was the same Red who had nerves of steel and didn't back down from any challenge, be it from a challenge in…hmm, what were those extracurricular classes he took again? Tae-kwon-do? I don't know. At any rate, he wasn't the kind to be fazed by anything, until you presented him with a surprise test or unscheduled pop quiz.

Gold munched thoughtfully on his obnoxiously oversize sub sandwich, ignoring the pointedly disgusted glares Silver shot him. Unfortunately, he wasn't known for being a very neat eater, and as a result, the area of table around his elbows was littered with wadded-up paper napkins, shreds of lettuce of splashes of sauce. Adding to his habit of sometimes talking with his mouth full, and it generally didn't add up to a very appealing image.

It seemed our red-headed friend had had enough of Gold being an untidy eater. Forcefully throwing a new stack of tissue paper at him, Silver took a deep breath, opened his mouth, and launched into full lecture mode.

"Damn it, Gold. If in normal company you're that unappealing to be around, then, for goodness sake, just keep _dreaming on_ about going to the ball with _her_. She is undoubtedly a woman of taste – as are, I'm certain, most females are…with the possible exception of Sapphire, but even so, that's a different matter entirely—" He paused for breath, before continuing, impatiently waving at the other boy to shut up whilst he continued. "A woman of taste, and if anything, will be likely to flee from the sight of you stuffing your face like some uncivilised boor. And guess who'll be having the last laugh? That's right, me. Because we all know I could do everything so much better. You know why? Because even if I'm not _Casanova Silver_ as you oh-so-aptly put it, I am on an entirely different level from you. Several better ones, I'd say."

Good grief. This was about to escalate into yet another full-scale verbal war. Before Gold could begin to voice his retort, a seemingly half-asleep newcomer came to join our table, unslinging his messenger bag to place it in an unoccupied seat.

'Afternoon, Dia," Red called, as he emptied his plate. "What's shaking?"

"Not much. Though I gotta say, I'm _starving_." We watched he trotted off to make his order at the counter. Judging by the increasingly frenetic speed of the waitsperson's scribbling, and her increasingly disbelieving look, Diamond seemed to be ordering enough to feed a small army. He returned to find the four of us staring at him in flabbergasted silence, eyebrows raised. "Uh…something I can…help you guys with?"

"Question," Gold drawled, seizing one of the napkins which had just been thrown at the general direction of his face, and swallowing his last bite of sandwich. "You're going to finish all that, I take it?"

"…Of course. Unless you four aren't finished and want extras…?" Diamond pulled a face, grinning sheepishly. "I was up until really late last night doing some revision, and then I got really hungry, because concentrating for a long time makes me hungry. But then I realised it was really late, and eating too much at those sort of hours would give you nightmares, so—"

"Wait, what? Hold on, hold on, rewind, rewind!" the other boy yelped, nearly sending a mouthful of soda across the table. "Oh, er, oops, sorry. My bad." He paused, mopping up the mess, before continuing in the same disbelieving tone. "Why'd you do that? I thought your first exam isn't until…Thursday."

"Well, yes. But Missy was always telling me about how important it was to revise as much as possible and stay on top of your workload, so that's exactly what I did."

I have to say, I admired his determination. If only some people had that sort of mindset. The world would be a less stressful place. Not to mention, I'd never have been conned into tutoring any obnoxious girls, ergo I would never have had to make this idiotic agreement.

"Speaking of Posh Girl. Who's she going to the ball with?" It was amazing how short Gold's attention span was—er, I mean, how quickly he could change topics.

Diamond reddened. "I don't know," he said evasively, averting his eyes. "She doesn't talk about it that much, and when Pearl bugs her, instead of getting annoyed, she just keeps this funny straight face on and tells us it's not important."

"Not important, huh?" I muttered. "_Huh._ I really wish Blue had the decency to say that and release me from that night of misery."

"Oh, don't be such a bad sport about it," Red said brightly, thumping me on the back as I snorted dismissively at my coffee. "I'm sure you'll regret saying that when it eventually rolls around. Besides, won't it be a nice reward, on _both_ sides of the spectrum? Or rather, for _both _of you?"

"What the heck are you talking about?" I demanded. From all these conversations, I was getting the most peculiar sense of déjà vu. Odd, how often I seemed to be incredulously ordering people to explain themselves, and just what they thought they were doing. "I can't possibly see how this will be _pleasant_ for me in any way. For her, yes. I can just about picture her scheming smile and little satisfied laugh when she drags me over to that dance floor two weeks or so from now. It's more than enough to give me indigestion."

"Oh, don't be like that," my _wonderfully supportive_ friend laughed, just as Diamond's food arrived; without batting an eye, he continued as though he had not seen the sheer number of plates currently being piled on our table. "See, if she aces this exam, it'll pay off for you because you know you've done a good job of tutoring her!"

Even Gold was staring pop-eyed – and silent, for once! Wonders never cease – at all that food in front of him. "Geez, are you planning on going to the ball as…well, a beach ball?"

"What? Oh, er, no," Diamond replied vaguely as he upended a bottle of Tabasco sauce over one of his plates. "Advantages of having a high metabolism, y'see."

Silver, whose head was buried in a financial magazine – probably revising for Economics, knowing him – snorted under his breath. "Not that Gold could possibly know a word like that, much less what it means."

"Hey—" Gold was about to respond in typically loud, aggravated fashion, when Diamond shoved a plate in front of him in what was evidently a placating gesture.

"Help yourself." I could almost hear him praying to goodness that Gold would just shut up already. Needless to say, he wasn't the only one weary of witnessing the perpetual war of words between the two boys. Sometimes, one just had to wonder how _friendly_ their rivalry was. Not that it was really a rivalry, seeing as how Silver clearly had the upper hand, academically speaking, though Gold had the sporting side covered. Not to mention the fact that Silver was a prefect of sorts, and Gold was the one constantly getting detention for doing amazingly stupid things, like almost succeeding in blowing up the chem labs with Flint last year (from what I heard, anyways) in what seemed like an attempt to impress a girl. Right, with an experiment gone badly, badly wrong, and with an older student well-known for his…fire-happy tendencies, who had probably been producing or playing around with highly combustible chemicals. Instant recipe for win…not. At any rate, hearing these two snipe at one another was enough to think they were born enemies.

I stabbed at the last of my lunch with my fork, before waving it warningly in front of me. "I _already know_ I've done a good job of tutoring her, thank you very much. The rest is up to her, and how diligent she truly is. I only made this little deal for…"

"Ah-hah! I knew it. You want this to happen, don't you? Admit it."

"Go away," I growled from between my teeth as Red leaned back in his seat, looking proud of himself.

Bastard.

**- - x x x x x - -**

The next few days passed pretty much in the same way as the first. It always invariably began the day before, where I would prepare for whatever assessment was on the next day, make some notes, jot down a few points when rapid-fire-answering essay questions, and so on and so forth. Then, without fail, at some point during the late afternoon or early evening, Blue would message me through some medium or another, be it through my phone – which I had now taken to throwing into my desk drawer and surrounding it with paper to muffle the noise it made – or Pokégear, or, if both were unavailable, through web messenger. The solution to all these was simple – log out of instant messaging and focus on reading past essays and whatnot, just turn the damned computer off, turn the phone and Pokégear off, or ignore all of them.

However, if there was one thing I could say about her, it was that she was persistent, and obnoxiously so. Without fail, I had to respond to whatever she sent me, otherwise the next time I turned any of my electronic devices on, I would immediately be assaulted by a barrage of messages. Sometimes, they were actually meaningful, and involved her informing me of her progress on revision of one of her topics, and making me 'test' her – this was tricky, seeing as how it involved a lot of texting. However, more often than not, she would drop cryptic comments and teasing messages which, if anything, frustrated the living daylights out of me. Here was something I could not decode, even if it was in plain English. I could read it, and I knew what it said, but essentially, I had no idea what she meant in all those idiotic little messages.

I swear, that girl had something planned, and it felt like eminent doom for me.

Then, after she eventually tired herself out and went to bed, I would resume where I left off, cram for a while longer, and retire relatively early myself, unless I kept slogging on late into the night and ended up snoozing all over my books, which caused waking up to be a rather painful experience. Mostly involving stiff necks, a headache, and a bad temper to match. The next morning, it was wake up, get ready, chuck whatever last-minute revision material I needed into my bag, and then off to school it was. Since I usually ended up getting there early, I had more than enough time to run through my subjects one last time, and generally provide…_support_ for whoever else was there, mostly by nodding at the appropriate intervals and making the odd, sympathetic but yet noncommittal grunt of agreement or whatever when a verbal response of some kind or another was necessary.

Then, when the exam corridor filled up with the huge number of students taking exams, it was time to tuck away the revision sheets and palm-cards, continue acting as the comforting shoulder to cry on (metaphorically, I suppose) to the aforementioned acquaintance or friend, rinse and repeat with the nodding and incomprehensible verbal responses, and wait.

Then, the exam doors opened, students rushed in, panicked in silence a little more, and the assessment began. There would be much fidgeting in chairs, low groans of exasperation, the scrape of chair legs across the floor, and much coughing and blowing-of-noses. Until now, I can never understand why exams were held during late winter, when a large proportion of the student body had colds. Instead of silence, one had to bear witness to a literal orchestra of sniffling, sneezing and occasional nose-blowing, though more often than not, it was the former. Not to mention, an undercurrent of foot-tapping and shuffling, pen-twirling and head-scratching.

I suppose they would justify this concept of late-winter exams by saying the ball was held during spring, and therefore at a more pleasant season. Hooray.

After the exams were over, it was time to rush out, try to squeeze out through the jammed doors and make a break for freedom. Usually, one ended up accompanied by the aforementioned friend or acquaintance, who, if female, obnoxious and suspiciously conniving, would latch onto your arm and proudly assure you she did most excellently, thank you so much for asking, I love you too, what about you? and, if male, had the tendency to be nervous about results, then would need to be forcibly removed from where they are obstructing the paths of other students, and dragged to the nearest eatery.

Then, following either one or, worst-case scenario, both of those procedures, you were left to repeat the day's events again for as many days as you had an exam.

Needless to say, by the end of this horrific ordeal, I was quite nearly at my wits' end, and was more than glad when I finished my last paper and was free for the rest of the week. Since Red and I were taking pretty much the same subjects, there was no big problem there, except for having to listen to him worry about the end result and what sort of overall grade and ranking he'd achieve. Blue, on the other hand, finished only at the very end of the week, so I was spared from having to listen to her ramble too much. However, the daily ritual of tutoring-by-text-message still continued, though that wasn't that big a price to pay for a few more days to compose myself before that idiotic, dreaded _dance_.

However, all this hedged on our terms of agreement. Whilst it felt rather ungentlemanly, uncharitable and plain _selfish_ for wishing Blue did not quite reach the criteria on which our little bet hung on, I consoled myself with the fact that this was for my peace of mind, and that she could easily go with someone else who was more enthusiastic about this thing.

One more week until results came out. A guy can hope, can't he? Even if his all-to-reproachful, traitorous conscience still tells him he's being a…what was it? Oh, yes. A 'jerk'.

To hell with all of this. I quite like being my usual insufferably 'distant' and 'uninterested' self, contrary to what Blue says. I don't care if the fairer sex likes men who can hold _pleasant _conversation, no matter how they look.

…besides, if she wanted _pleasant _conversation, the furthest she would have to go is to Red. He's far too damned _nice_ for his own good. As for me, I think I'll stick with being a 'jerk' any day, thanks.

**- - x x x x x - -**

I can't believe the system in this school. I had already known as soon as I transferred here earlier this year that they trended to call assemblies for just about any reason, and this week, they decided to have one _specially dedicated _to announcing the exam results. Fabulous, just fabulous. If Blue succeeds, the whole school gets to see her jump in joy at winning this bet. If she doesn't, the whole school will also come to know that I apparently decided not to tutor her properly after being threatened with this agreement. Glorious. It was like being caught between a rock and a hard place, or being forced to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea, so to speak. Needless to say, neither prospect was very appealing, and once again, I cannot stress enough the fact that I did not care much for that little moment when the obnoxious woman in question, who had managed to find a place next to _me_ to sit, turned to give me the widest, most cheerfully unsettling grin I had ever seen from her yet.

This was a sure sign of bad things to come. For me, of course. Though I couldn't help but notice she looked rather _fetching_ when she wasn't pouting, trying to play mind-games with me, or…wait. She _was_ playing mind games with me. _This_ time, though, I would not give her the satisfaction of seeing me splutter and lose all coherency.

Let me reiterate the gravity of the situation. I cannot quite believe I used the word _fetching_ to describe her – not for the first time, horror of horrors – and that my subconscious was sending me rather suspiciously calming messages, as though telling me to _not_ blow this hideous turn of events out of proportion.

As if that was going to happen.

Once again, Red was looking decidedly uneasy, and had spent the last few minutes asking me if there was any way he could possibly _not_ have to sit here and see the rankings. It felt rather cruel to tune him out, but the truth was, I had just realised the prospect of going to this dance didn't seem so bad after all.

…this was a sure sign that my conscience was a horrible traitor. And that it seemed to enjoy the sensation of having the very female who had plagued my thought processes through the past few months leaning against my shoulder, with that same, satisfied smile on her face.

Good gods, we were attracting a few stares. How was this in any way appropriate?_ No_, damn it, I did _not_ want to broadcast the message to the whole student body that we were, heavens forbid, _involved_. Why? Because the simple truth was that we weren't. And yet, here was a certain girl named Blue, playing it up for all it was worth and acting like she had already won the bet and was officially flaunting that 'couple' status she would temporarily be getting on _that_ night for a few hours.

I leaned over to shoot Red an accusatory glare, only to have him shrug nonchalantly back at me. Please, just let this be over and done with, so that I would no longer have devious girls stubbornly pinioning one arm and insisting on using me as a human pillow of sorts.

All whispering in the auditorium petered out at the appearance of Giovanni. Headmaster or not, there was no denying the fact that he was an intimidating man, with this reputation further reinforced by the rumours of the enterprises he ran a few years ago. With the sudden descent of silence, I was left stewing with my thoughts, and trying to ignore the sensation of growing numbness spreading up my right arm just as the lights dimmed, and the projector overhead flickered on.

Somehow, I figured Blue would not be appreciative of me telling her that her head was surprisingly heavy, even if it apparently seemed as though she didn't have much in it. Firstly, she would make a scene, and put on her best 'injured pride' act, and secondly, we both knew it wasn't quite true – I acknowledged this with a sinking feeling, as the image on the projector screen sharpened. Not to mention, she would find even more reason to tell me I 'talk too much' and smugly inform me she had 'just the solution' to remedy that.

"As yet another year winds down," Giovanni began, ignoring the fidgeting from students in the front row, "and, as with all things, we have had our good as well as our bad." For a moment, it looked as though he was staring pointedly at the sixth-formers near the back of the auditorium, who exchanged glances. "After a few weeks of frazzled nerves, and much burning of midnight oil, the exams are over, and I am sure many of you would have gotten the results you _deserve_." His eyes narrowed, hawklike, and it didn't require much genius-level intellect to figure out just who and what he was referring to. More murmuring arose from some of the people surrounding us, and Blue chuckled a little under her breath.

I nudged her, hissing at her to shut up and stop attracting attention to herself.

"Today, it is my _great_ pleasure to announce to you all the scores achieved by the top students in each subject, as well as overall." No doubt Giovanni meant every bit he said; he smirked a little to himself, before diverting our scrutiny towards the projector screen, towards where a spreadsheet of sorts had just appeared. There was no need for any further words, and he left the student body to gape at the names at the very top of the list, waiting for the eventual 'oh my goodness'-es and 'holy _shit_'s to arise.

Unsurprisingly enough, Roxanne had emerged top of the year running again. That in itself was hardly a revelation, seeing as how Red had told me that without fail, hers was always the first name on the list, on account of how pretty much most of what she did every hour of the day was study, study, study. I glimpsed a few other names further down the list, such as Crystal, Sapphire Birch, Silver, Sabrina, Jasmine, Candice, Marge, and, surprisingly enough, Angie and Mack, before returning to the top of the rankings. I was determined to ignore mine, and as soon as I got to the third name down, I felt my heart nearly stop.

As clear as day, the very text – a sans-serif typeface, presumably size 14, magnified several times by the projection – seemed to mock me even as I stared at it.

_Blue_, it read, and, next to her name, was her percentage overall score. _95.5% subject-wide aggregate. Grade-point average, 3.8_.

The girl in question nearly deafened me with her uncharacteristic shriek of shock, before rising from her seat to jump up and down in a most enthusiastic manner, and succeeding in dragging me upright as well.

It was with utter bemusement that I found myself yanked up and bounced around with her, and seeing stars before my eyes. It wasn't that pleasant a sensation, to feel as though one was on a particularly uncomfortable, gravity-defying amusement-park ride.

"I won! I won! I won!" There was no mistaking the triumph in her voice as she began to dance a little victory jig, pulling me this way and that as she did so.

"Yes." I found myself unable to respond, momentarily stunning into silence despite my earlier calm. Fair enough, I had more or less accepted the fact that I might lose, but I didn't think I would do so this spectacularly. I had expected her to do reasonably well, perhaps in the mid- to high eighties range, but that…was a pretty damn good score. "Yes," I repeated, a little less monotonously. "Congratulations are in order, I believe."

Finally calming down slightly and allowing herself to be ushered back into her seat, she turned to me, red-faced and breathless. "I couldn't have done it without you," she declared in a proud whisper, just as Giovanni called for silence. Though her next words were lost when the headmaster resumed addressing his markedly less attentive audience, I could vaguely hear something along the lines of, "_this makes it all the sweeter_," though I could have sworn that was just my imagination and sense of hearing playing tricks on me.

Or at least, I hoped so.

The last few moments of the assembly passed in a blur for me, on account of how a quasi-battle of sorts was raging within my mind. On one hand, this was my worst nightmare realised, for it meant actually having to _go_ for the damned event, and seeing as how she won by our agreed terms, it meant that it would be completely and utterly ungracious for me to suddenly have cold feet. Not to mention, it would cast a massive shadow on my reputation. On the other hand, some part of my mind was still telling me it wasn't so bad, and for once, I was going with somebody I actually liked, wasn't I?

…wait. Where in the blazes had that one stray thought come from? No, subconscious, I believe the correct term is _tolerated_. I tolerated her, and actually knew her rather better than that other girl I had been press-ganged into going with that fateful last time. Or rather, that's what I hoped.

Let's make a list. I knew she was born on the first of June, in Pallet Town. She liked fruit smoothies, iced tea, gelato, pecan pies, petit fours, crème caramel and hazelnut praline, even if she complained about the fact that half of those were rather fattening. She liked having compliments lavished on her, as well as attention, but yet, amazingly enough, didn't let it get to her head too much. Or so she insisted. She had dreams of becoming either a journalist or researcher, though she was afraid to admit as much to anyone who asked, on account of how they didn't seem to fit her carefully-cultivated image of playful nonchalance. She had a distinctly devil-may-care attitude towards rules, and loved breaking them, though even she had lines which she didn't cross. She liked staying up late, watching the stars, telling people about what she saw in the sky, and long conversations. She hated birds for their unblinking stares and the way they swooped around, which was probably why she loved cats. And today, I had learnt something new. For all her shortcomings, she had an ironclad will and certain stubborn tenacity, as well as a less admirable fondness for making bets and gambling.

All in all, I concluded, this little formal event would probably wind up a lot better than the last one. For one, I was older, wiser, more patient – hopefully – and a better dancer. The fact that I knew her helped immensely, even if I had not known her for anywhere near as long as I knew Red, or, for that matter, as long as they had known one another.

What's the worst that could happen?

**- - x x x x x - -**

As we made our way home that afternoon, I was rather glad Red made no comment about whatever had happened during the assembly, though every now and then, he kept shooting me covert glances, as though worried I would suddenly implode or something.

"If there's something you want to say, spit it out," I said at last. "Or, if you want to laugh, or say '_I told you so_', then please, go ahead and spare us both some misery."

"What? What makes you think I was going to do or say anything of the sort?" He stopped short, looking genuinely shocked. I shrugged, hoisting my bag up slightly.

"Dunno. I guess it's just what I'd do, if I were in your place."

"Ha ha ha, yeah, no." Red resumed walking, grinning faintly. "Heck, I think this is the best thing in a long time to happen to you."

"_Why_?" Now it was my turn to stop and stare at him.

"Hey, no need to get all smarmy on me." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully before continuing. "I just think going to this dance will do you a world of good, y'know? For once, you should focus on other things. For a nice change of pace, y'see."

"Focus on things other than _what_?"

He sighed, sounding exasperated. "Green, you may be a genius when it comes to things in books, but when it comes to social things…you aren't that great, man."

"I'm not socially retarde—"

"I wasn't saying you are. I mean, it's just something you don't seem to grasp that well."

This was very perceptive, even by Red's standards. And he picked up on a lot of things, even if he liked acting oblivious – though sometimes he actually _was_ – and liked joking about them, which tended to make people uncomfortable. "I don't know what you're talking about," I told him bluntly, though I was beginning to see where he was going towards.

"Of course you do," he said, all seriousness. "You're always focused on improving yourself, whichever way you can. You overwork yourself, man, and it's not healthy. C'mon, don't tell me it's fun to be poring over revision books all the time or running a hundred laps around the playing field—"

"I do _neither_ of those things, thank you very much—"

"It was just a hyperbole, but what I'm getting at is, you're too much of a workaholic. It certainly isn't healthy for someone like you. I mean, sure, if you work full-time in research and development or whatever, then by all means. But not when you're still young. Gotta make time for other things, you know? Since you started hanging out with Blue, you've relaxed a bit." 

"Oh?" I found this mildly surprising, though in retrospect, his words rang true. I certainly wasn't getting that annoyed that easily anymore, no doubt due to the fact that Blue's fondness for physical proximity and idle chatter in general had succeeded in making me more tolerant to those things.

"Yeah. You don't snap nearly as much anymore, and you're more talkative, and less grumpy. Though by normal standards, you're still very much a grouch. And you don't push yourself quite as hard anymore. Well, uh. I mean, you still _do_, but you just spread it out over a larger span of time, you get me?"

"…yes. Yeah, I do."

"Well, all I can say is, keep it up. Enjoy yourself, and don't stress too much." His lips curved into a wide grin. "And start looking forwards to that dance and letting your hair down. Er, figuratively, that is. We've got quite a week of preparation ahead of us, and I'm sure you want to look your best for your _lady friend_." Red guffawed a little at parroting my own words back at me, dodging the half-hearted slap I directed towards the back of his head. "You'd want to get more sleep, too. Girls don't dig dark circles, or eyebags large enough to count as luggage. Go catch up on your beauty sleep this time around, I'm sure you didn't get much of that these past few weeks."

I snorted as I opened my gate. "Shut up, you. As if you'd know."

**- - x x x x x - -**

**endnotes. **_Hello-hello! So sorry for the lack of updates, ffffffeh. What with exams, getting dastardly results (due to bad planning, lack of organisational skills and a profound distaste for revision in general, rofl), life has been pretty hectic at the moment. That, and the fact that I am playing Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days for like, the fourth time, and writing fics on that as well. Heh. Well, I've mostly been planning out a thousand and one fics in general, but bear with me; _'_A Hundred Days' __will__ be the first multichaptered fic I complete, so help me, a self-confessed oneshot writer! It's like a personal goal of sorts, haha._

…_also, does anyone seem to notice that the chapters are getting slightly exponentially longer. |: According to MS Word's wordcount, anyways. Let's just say uh. I'm trying to make up for delays. Yeahthat._

_Sorry for the name change; I've probably confused a few of y'all, orz. But this is totally the last time, I swear. No, really. And, to answer one of the questions on several peoples' lips: yes, I am a Troper (of sorts), though I don't contribute to TVTropes itself. Oh no, I don't have enough witty tales to tell (sob!), and am pretty much too pop culture-illiterate to be able to add to the lovely pages already in existence, woe be me. TVTropes consumes much of my time in that I can just sit there for hours on end, clicking from one page to another and giggling at all the provided examples. That, and the fact that I go there to find fanfic recs (I found the KH fic 'A Sorrow of Magpies' from there; that was a wonderfully __**epic**__ read~ *u* 15 chapters of pure amazingness pls); I also discovered my writing style is distinctly Purple Prose-ish, especially when I revert to a more formal, serious tone, though, shhh, it's not thaaaat bad )8 Is it?_

_Okaywell. I'll stop rambling. Once again, thanks for the reviews, lovelies, and I apologise for inconsistencies here: this chapter was pretty much written over a one month period, and because I lack proofreading and organisational skills, I often miss out on irregularities and whatnot. Bah. Also, another two or so chapters to go! Or maybe three. I can't decide. :/ Hang in there!_

_Love, R._


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